Gymkhana

Gymkhana is a strange word. Whenever and wherever Yangonians hear this word they think of and about a maternity hospital. Foreigners are always hard put to understand how Myanmars, especially the residents of Yangon, came by with the idea. Gyamkhana is a maternity hospital? Impossible to imagine and improbable to perceive: so some people say. Only our people can give a strange twist to the meaning.

          Everything changes with time, and sometimes the change is so far reaching that new is totally different from the original. That is the case with gymkhana.

          Once upon a time, it was a gym. Jawanns from British colonial army were seen there doing gymnastics. The halls were littered with barbells, dumbbells, clubs (made of heavy hardwood with steel bands or rings at one end and a small handle at the other) and many other tools for exercising and body building.

          During the Japenese occupation, all those tool became odds and ends and disappered. After the war, it became a makeshift hospital. As things settled down, it came to be used as a maternity hospital. But, the old man stuck to it and became inseparable from it. “Gym” became a hospital. How did “Khana” got attached to it?

          As most of the visitors to the gym were north-Indian soldiers of the British army, they stuck their definitions to the gym. “Khana” may mean a cell, a cubicle, a room, a hall, a lounge, a lobby So it simply meant “ a hall for gymnastics”. After half a century of that use, the name got stuck to the place. Later, bus conductors, taxi drivers, trishaw-men and pony- cark drivers reinforced the name with their repetitive shouts, and helped it to perpetuate. Even  now, people regard and think gymkhana means a maternity hospital.