Love and Exile with Burmese Princess Inge Sargent

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Burmese Princess in exile Inge Sargent shares her riveting story of extraordinary courage and love.  She is the author of Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess, and is the recipient of a United Nations International Human Rights Award. You’ll hear her thoughts on following the heart, on courage, and how to work with the mind in a time of crisis. Originally from Austria, she became a “Mahadevi”, or Ruling Princess, when she married her first husband, Sao Kya Seng, who was the “Saophalong”, or Ruling Prince, of Hsipaw State. Located in Northern Burma, Hsipaw is one of the largest of the ethnic Shan states, about the size of Connecticut, and the closest border is China. Hear her reminisce about the feeling she had when she first met Sao, how he “spoke to [her] heart directly.” Sao was a kind and thoughtful man who deeply believed in the power of democracy. But in the end, the instability in the region was too great, and the military too strong, and in 1962, everything changed… Find out more of the hardships Inge endured after the military coup d’etat, and learn what beautiful gifts Sao gave to her life, including, “…a perspective that is kind of boundless…”

I always think there is the brain, and there’s the heart. And, sometimes the brain warns you and says “don’t do that” and the heart says “go ahead… go ahead…” and that’s what I always did. And I have never regretted it for one moment.

-Inge Sargent

Inge’s book: Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess

Donate to Partners Asia, learn more about what they do, and learn about the Sao Thusandhi Leadership Award given annually in Inge’s honor.

“Partners Asia supports community initiatives to improve the lives of Myanmar’s most vulnerable”

Thank you for listening! If you were moved by Inge’s story, share it with anyone you think would also be touched by it, and post about it on social media @ashowofhearts (Instagram, Facebook and Twitter), using #ashowofhearts. Feel free to comment on our social media and send us an email at info@ashowofhearts.com. Remember to choose courage, even when it’s scary, and join me in igniting the world with our hearts!

Transcript

Rosemary P.:

You are listening to A Show of Hearts. The podcast about finding the courage to live a deep and magical life. I’m your host, life coach Rosemary Pritzker. (singing).

Rosemary P.:

Hi everyone. Welcome to A Show of Hearts. I’m Rosemary Pritzker. My guest today is Inge Sargent she’s originally from Austria, grew up during World War II, and through a series of events you’ll hear in the interview, she later became a Burmese princess, when she married her first husband Sao Kya Seng. She’s the author of Twilight Over Burma: My Life as Chan Princess, and is the recipient of the United Nations International Human Rights Award.

Rosemary P.:

Her story was also made into a movie by the German version of PBS. I’m so excited to share her story with you today, because Inge is someone who is very near to my heart. I’ve known her most of my life. She’s my step great-grandmother, meaning her daughter Mayari was married to my grandfather until he passed a few years ago. Inge lives in Boulder Colorado, which is where I grew up. When I sat down with her I spoke about my fond memories of when we used to go to her house for dinner when I was a kid and teen in the 90s.

Rosemary P.:

She would cook these amazing meals from different cultures around the world. It feels like an honor and a privilege to be able to sit here and chat with you and learn ore about your story. Your stories always inspired me so much, and not just your story but your presence. Being around you feels special. I think most of my family feels that way. Whenever I bring up your name, everyone’s like, “Oh, Inge, we love her.” Thank you for being here with me today to sit and talk about your story.

Inge Sargent:

Thank you Rose. I’m delighted to see you as always. You are right, we have known each other … I don’t even count years anymore, and you probably realize I’m old, and I don’t … I love cooking, I still do a lot of cooking, but maybe not as much or as good as I used to do it. I’m happy to see you and I’m delighted that you have that program, and I wish you lots of success.

Rosemary P.:

Thank you.

Inge Sargent:

I know you [crosstalk 00:03:19].

Rosemary P.:

With that, the theme of my show is speaking with courageous people about how they follow their hearts. I’d love to just ask you, what does it mean to you to follow the heart?

Inge Sargent:

To follow the heart. I always think that there is the brain and there is the heart. Sometimes the brain warns you and says, “Don’t do that.” And the heart says, “Go ahead.” That’s what I always did. I have never regretted it for one moment, even though sometimes the results weren’t exactly in other people’s minds the right results, but for me they were. Whenever there was a choice it was always the heart that prevailed.

Inge Sargent:

I was born in a small town in a small valley in southern Austria. And the only college prep high school there only accepted boys. Then finally they had to finally accept girls. I was one of the few girls who went … I still remember I was 10. They put you either in the general school or the college prep school. I did very well in my exams, entrance exams in math, reading and writing. I did not know how to do the somersault backwards. That was a requirement.

Inge Sargent:

I tried and tried and I couldn’t do it. There was a question, will they accept me? That was still during the Hitler time, when all sorts of things were very important to them like phys ed and so on. Then they took me.

Rosemary P.:

I imagine growing up with experiences like that during the time of the Nazis must hae instilled a lot of bravery and resilience and things like that in you.

Inge Sargent:

Yeah. And that’s one thing I didn’t write in the book that happened before. My mother was arrested. I still remember by Nazis in this small town. I opened the door, because somebody knocked, and there were two German soldiers in uniform. They said they wanted to speak to my mother. I said, “Okay.” I called my mother, and I was 12 maybe at that time. My mother came and they said, “Here is the iron cross of motherhood that Hitler gives you.” She said, “What for?”

Inge Sargent:

He said, “Well, you have four children. As a mother of four children, the Reich, whoever gives you this motherhood.” She said, “I don’t want that because I had the kids for myself not for Hitler or anybody.” She didn’t accept it. And then she was guarded off to jail of course, but she was taken out. She was able to come out. Things like that happened. It was a very testy trying period.

Inge Sargent:

My mother was ambitious, and my father also, but he knew how to do it. He knew how to treat me. Every morning from the age of 10 to 18, I had to take the train Monday through Saturday to school down to the other end of the valley at 6:30 in the morning. I sometimes said, “I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to go to school.” Then my father said, “Well, you don’t have to. You don’t have to go to college prep. You can go to the general school here.” In a way he was using other techniques.

Rosemary P.:

Inge was one of the first Austrians to ever receive a full bright scholarship, which enabled her to attend university in Denver Colorado in 1951.

Inge Sargent:

That was the very first group. Then I said, “Well,” I followed my heart. That said, go to the US. It was quite exciting.

Rosemary P.:

What I keep thinking about when I think about that piece of your story. For a woman in the early 50s to go to university at all, much less across the world where they speak another language was pretty daring.

Inge Sargent:

Yeah. You are right. It was considered, but luckily my family was reasonable or nice, because it wasn’t that long after world war ii, and they were kind of suspicious. They said, “Are you really ready to go across the ocean and find out?” I said, “Sure, I’d love to. That’s where I want to go. I want to go and see the world.” There was no such restriction you are supposed to do this. You do what you feel is right for you. We don’t know, we have no idea what you are getting into, but you have our blessing. So I went. It was very exciting. Coming to the US my goodness.

Rosemary P.:

Inge reminisced about her time at Colorado women’s college.

Inge Sargent:

We didn’t quite understand, all the girls in women’s college, they got all excited about panty raids. We didn’t know what that was. Panty, do you know what the panty-

Rosemary P.:

No.

Inge Sargent:

Men from men’s college tried to climb up in the night somewhere in the open windows, and go into the drawers and take out the panties of girls and steal them. Those are called panty raids.

Rosemary P.:

That’s hilarious.

Inge Sargent:

We thought it was stupid.

Rosemary P.:

Tell me about meeting Sao, what was the moment when you first met him?

Inge Sargent:

I think in October 1951. It’s a long time ago. 1951 October. We went to a place where they had, every Friday a kind of get together for international students. That’s where I met Sao.

Rosemary P.:

Do you remember the first moment you met him?

Inge Sargent:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rosemary P.:

What was that like?

Inge Sargent:

There was an instant recognition of something. Of a chemistry or a spark, or a person … I didn’t know what it was, but there were lots of other people around. There was something that spoke to me, that spoke to my heart directly. That was … There were other guys. Then I had lots of invitations to go out to dates. That didn’t interest me, but he did. There was some recognition and also from his side.

Inge Sargent:

They had some music on records. We danced, and that was very exciting. Then we had a phone for girls, a telephone, which is in the EC, and then he called. That’s when it all started. We got engaged, and I went back to Austria and told my parents. I want to marry. My father said, “Well, when you are 21 you can marry, you can cut your hair and you can smoke.” I never smoked, I never cut my hair, but I did get married when I was 21 years old. He came to visit me and ask my father for my hand in marriage, which I had to translate, because his German was one semester at the school of mine. That was it.

Inge Sargent:

He was definitely a different racially and in any way, religious. He promised my parents that I could come home any time I wanted to, but we were going to live in Burma. He said he wanted to speak to my father alone, and I said, “Okay.”

Rosemary P.:

Good luck.

Inge Sargent:

It won’t be much of a conversation, but I wasn’t included. They went into the … We had a little orchard right next to where I grew … The building. They went into the orchard, and very soon they came back and they were slapping each other on the shoulder and saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I heard a lot of yeah, yeah, yeahs. Later on Sao told me that he told my father that he was a ruling prince. My father didn’t get it.

Inge Sargent:

So he said that he thought my father understood, and my father was going to tell my mother, and my mother was going to tell me. Nobody knew.

Rosemary P.:

What did your father think he said?

Inge Sargent:

My father just, I asked, “What did you speak about?” He said, this and that, or the trees or the fruit, or whatever in the garden. That was it.

Rosemary P.:

Inge and Sao weren’t able to get married in Austria, because Austria and Burma were still at war. The process of making piece would take a year or longer, but Inge did not want to wait. They returned to Colorado to get married there.

Inge Sargent:

Then we got married here, he a Buddhist, I was then a catholic, that was everybody else, in a Jewish, by a Methodist minister. The bridesmaid was Confucius from Hong Kong, the best man was Koptic from Ethiopia. That was our wedding.

Rosemary P.:

It seems a perfect way to start what then happened with the rest of the story.

Inge Sargent:

Exactly. We were the first couple in Colorado who got an interracial marriage.

Rosemary P.:

I remember you playing that.

Rosemary P.:

That’s amazing.

Rosemary P.:

I asked Inge what gave her the courage to say yes to Sao’s proposal knowing that it would mean living in Burma?

Inge Sargent:

I knew nothing about Burma, but I had an absolute trust and faith in him. To me it was, if he thinks I can do, I can live there, I can live there. He had … I mean, there was so much faith and trust in me that I said, “I can do that.” And even then we went, first when we went to Rangoon, the capital of Burma. We had to still go up to our state, which is about 700 miles or 600 miles from Rangoon. People said, “You don’t want to go there. They are head hunters and witches.” I said, “So be it. I want to go and I want to live there. He trusts me and I trust him.”

Rosemary P.:

That’s amazing. That’s really beautiful.

Inge Sargent:

There was really never any doubt in my mind, never.

Rosemary P.:

Amazing. (singing).

Rosemary P.:

Sao didn’t tell Inge that he was a ruling prince until they arrived in Burma already married.

Inge Sargent:

So he always postponed telling me, and there was something that he didn’t want me to have different expectations. I mean, he didn’t want me to expect me to flitter around like a princess, and so on. He never told me, and then he had to when we came to Rangoon, and all those people were there to welcome us. I still remember saying, “Why would they welcome a mining engineer like that?” Because I married a mining engineer.

Inge Sargent:

Then he told me after a while. I was a little miffed at him, because I had absolutely trusted him, and then he had come and he said, everybody welcomed me as their princess and I had absolutely no idea. He said, “I’ll tell you later.” There were always people around in the Strand Hotel where we stayed.

Rosemary P.:

The impression I got from talking to you in the past, and from what I read in the book was that he didn’t tell you because he wanted you to love him for who he was as a person.

Inge Sargent:

Very much so.

Inge Sargent:

I wanted him and I didn’t care for everything around.

Rosemary P.:

What were your first impressions of what it meant to be a princess in that context?

Inge Sargent:

Well, first of all, I mean, my first priority was always he. He was the first priority. Then the thing was that we had so many servants. He said, “That’s your, you take care of that. That’s your department.” I had, all of a sudden, what do you do with all those servants? He said, “That’s your job.” Food, what do you do? You do the menu for every day. I didn’t know what most of those things were.

Inge Sargent:

Then the visitors, I mean, there were constantly people coming in and first they went on their knees when they approached me, on their knees. I said, “No. That won’t work.” That was a big shock in the beginning. Then first of all he did not really appreciate too many, we didn’t have too many festivals, because he said, “No, these festivals still cost money, and the money is much better invested in the people than in stupid festivals.”

Rosemary P.:

Inge went on to explain more the cultural differences that she had to adapt to in this new role as their princess.

Inge Sargent:

Well, for instance, the servants would never take a day off. Then I figured out a schedule that everybody had to have a day off. The day off came and they were here. I said, “It’s your day off.” “Oh, you don’t want me to be here?” “No, yes, I want you to be around, but today is your day off to do something else.” “We don’t want that.” Same with vacations. They said if there is a reason they’ll ask me. That was part of my thing just to take care of everybody and make everybody happy.

Rosemary P.:

Well, and to adjust to those cultural differences.

Inge Sargent:

There was a lot of adjustment, but it was … I never resented it, I never even questioned it. It was just part of life.

Rosemary P.:

So, what was your full Chan name?

Inge Sargent:

My full Shan name was Sao Thu Sandi, and nobody ever called me that, because Sao Thu Sandi, the people would always refer to me as royal mother, royal sister, royal elder sister, royal auntie, royal grandmother. Even though I was only 22 years old. They always kind of … They used a title, and they put themselves in the relationship they would be if I were their sister. Then I had a title, The Mahadevi of Hsipaw.

Rosemary P.:

What was Sao’s full name?

Inge Sargent:

It was Sao Kya Seng Sao Palong of Hsipaw State. That was our name.

Rosemary P.:

What was the food like?

Inge Sargent:

The food was delicious. Of course, first, the main cook tried to give me some British food, which was pretty awful. Then I said, “No, I want Chan food.” Then he started to make very very good Chan food. That is a lot of vegetables, fried, not heavy on oil, they didn’t use butter. Lots of the homegrown vegetables and a little bit of meat, but not much, smaller pieces. That’s why when you see somebody now from Asia they see a big steak, they just about leave to say the least. The food was very very good, and the fruit was delicious. (singing).

Rosemary P.:

The Chan people originated in China, and then in 69BC in order to avoid persecution from the northern Chinese they began to spread through Thailand, Laos, and eventually Burma. While they are related to the Thai, the Laotians and the Chinese, they are not related to any other ethnic group within Burma. The last census done was in 1931, when Chans were 7% of the population of Burma. Hsipaw state, where Sao and Inge ruled is one of the largest of the Chan states, located in northern Burma, it’s about the size of Connecticut, and the closest border is China.

Rosemary P.:

Inge says her guess is that there were somewhere around a few hundred thousand or maybe half a million people in Hsipaw, during the time she lived there.

Inge Sargent:

The Chan people, I mean, they impressed me so much. Of course I had to learn Chan, which is a tonal language. What impressed me is their compassion, and they are really caring, and their love for other people. It was, I always … In the beginning I didn’t understand, I would pay their salaries. They would, on the way home they would give away most of it to somebody who needed it more than they did. When somebody died there was never ever an announcement or asking for help.

Inge Sargent:

People went there and helped them before they could say anything. They were taking care, there were no mental institutions, no old age homes. No kindergartens, everybody took care of everybody else. There were no hotels, but basically when somebody came into town, the Chan people said, “Come and stay with us. Stay here. We have always room.”

Rosemary P.:

That’s so different.

Inge Sargent:

They are so so kind, and that’s what they were to me. I mean, here I came, make lots of pubus, like for instance when you have to … In Chan, you have the syllable Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, and they have five different meanings. Ma is come, and if you say Ma, it’s dog. Instead of telling somebody, I said, “Come Ma, Ma, Ma.” I’d say Ma, and I’d call this person a dog, which isn’t very nice.

Rosemary P.:

But I’m sure they understood you were learning the language.

Inge Sargent:

They understood and they were always kind. And they were helping me. I respected them and they respected me. It was a lot of respect for everybody. That is something, and a lot of kindness and offering and love really. They were so gentle people. I say that all Chans are just perfect angels, generally. That was just generally their approach.

Rosemary P.:

You are listening to A Show of Hearts. I’m Rosemary Pritzker. If you are inspired by what you are hearing, grab your phone, take a screenshot of this episode, open Instagram, and post the photo to your friends. Tell them why you love what you are hearing, and how you are gonna apply it to your life. Then use hashtag, A Show of Hearts.

Rosemary P.:

Sao was a kind and thoughtful man who deeply believed in the power of democracy. This belief was emboldened when he returned to Burma from his four years in the United States, where he’d had the chance to witness and take part in what was in the 1950s a stable democracy. Unfortunately, he was only one man, and while he and Inge were able to do a lot of good during the 10 years in which they ruled together in Burma, the region itself continued to destabilize more and more.

Rosemary P.:

This was due to violence and political manipulations involving everyone from the Burmese army to various rebel groups, and was affected by the remnants of both British colonial rule, and a brutal war that was perpetrated by the Japanese in the 1940s. Sao believed stability would come through diplomacy, and for this he gained a great deal of respect and admiration from many of his people. In the end, the instability was too great, and the military too strong. In 1962 everything changed.

Inge Sargent:

The prime minister of Burma, who was U Nu had a conference planned, a nationality conference in Rangoon, and all the ruling princes, and all the different ethnic minorities were invited, and they were going to for once and for all settle who is going to be politically in what position. That’s when the military struck and arrested everybody, the whole … I mean, thousands of people. The whole cabinet, the whole supreme court. The whole, what do you call it? Congress, upper house, lower house, all the leaders.

Inge Sargent:

They arrested everybody and killed a few people in there. Right away they were killed in prison. Then my first husband Sao was never, they never admitted to having arrested him and taking him, but they killed him.

Rosemary P.:

So what happened to you and the girls when that happened?

Inge Sargent:

Well, we first of all, all there was this desperate search for him. I was under house arrest and I couldn’t go. Kennari was not quite three, and Mayari was not quite six. We were in our little residence or palace. Most of our royal servants were either, they were either arrested or they stayed with us. I couldn’t go anywhere. There were lists coming out in the newspaper saying so and so had been arrested, and then they always said my first husband was never seen. They didn’t know what happened to him.

Rosemary P.:

There were witnesses, right?

Inge Sargent:

There were witnesses, and there were letters.

Rosemary P.:

Yeah, but the letters came one and two days after he was arrested?

Inge Sargent:

Yeah. There was a search for him and some paper said he was never arrested, and I got letters from him, two messages that he was arrested, and he was seen. Of course people came and said where he was seen. The others said, “No, he was thrown out of a plane somewhere.” The others said, “No, no, that’s not true. He was in that prison. Somebody saw him.” Of course I said to everybody, “Get me proof. I want proof. I want either his signature or another letter from him.”

Inge Sargent:

I kept searching and looking. I wrote, although I was not allowed to leave. I had messengers taking letters to seven newspapers. One of them was an English newspaper, English language. The others were Burmese. I wrote and I said, he was taken at that place at that time. There were witnesses. And only one Burmese newspaper printed my letter. The others did not. And the English newspaper did not either. As soon as that came out then the military intelligence came and said, “What did you do? You made things very difficult for us.”

Inge Sargent:

I said, “What do you mean?” They said, “You sent this letter?” I said, “Yes, I did it because you didn’t. You were supposed, it was army’s responsibility and since you didn’t do the thing that you are responsible for I did.” They said, “You are making things difficult.” I said, “What is difficult for you?”

Rosemary P.:

Not that things were not difficult for you.

Inge Sargent:

I was not allowed to get my mail. I was not allowed to see anybody until I finally decided that I’m going to go and see the colonel there. The drivers were arrested. They were gone. I had the car, the Mercedes, and I was not allowed to leave our place. There was a gate, I took the car and asked my maid to come with me, my bamui. We went to the gate, the gate was open but there six Burmese militaries standing there. I stopped, and they said, “You can’t go out. You can’t go any further.”

Inge Sargent:

I said, “I have to go to see the colonel.” They said, “Okay, if you go any further we’ll shoot.” There were six AK47s pointed at me. I said, “Well, I have to go and see the colonel, and you have to shoot. You do what you want but I’m going.” I went by and they didn’t shoot, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. This is kind of difficult, and I felt I had to do it. There was no fear. I mean, my maid was trembling. She was sitting in the back seat. She was afraid and I was not. I just went.

Rosemary P.:

Tell me about the decision to escape Burma and what that was like?

Inge Sargent:

Well, Sao had always said if I somehow disappear or die or anything. He said, “I want you to go back to Austria, to your family.” I said, “No, I don’t think so. I would want to look for you.” He said, “No, that would be no use, because if I’m not here you wouldn’t be safe.” I said, “I don’t care. I would like to do that.” He said, “No, you must promise me. You must promise me that if anything happens to me,” and I had some premonitions before that something would happen but I didn’t know what. Then when there was all this thing, and I tried everything. There were all these questions, what happened to him?

Inge Sargent:

I couldn’t solve it in Burma. Then I thought maybe I should go and work from the outside. Actually to leave from our place to Rangoon, the brother of the former secretary general of the United Nations U Thant, his brother U Khant came and helped me to get down. I went to Rangoon, where we had some houses, and the kids went to school there, and I was in Rangoon trying to find out what happened, where was Sao? I still hadn’t accepted that he was dead. Although I was told.

Inge Sargent:

Then finally when somebody, one of the previous commanders of this general, this hateful man, came to tell me that he was sure that Sao was not alive anymore. I didn’t really want to believe him. You know how it is. You want to … You don’t want to believe that, because you hadn’t seen, and you are still hoping. Then I decided the best way to try and find out more what happened to him, if I meet him again it would be if I leave the country. That’s when I left under incredible circumstances.

Rosemary P.:

It sounds like it was actually hard to leave.

Inge Sargent:

It was, because they delayed my leaving, since I was always an Austrian citizen. Eventually they had to give me permission to leave. They were not allowed to hold somebody, but the children were both born there. They were obviously Burmese citizens. Somebody had to kind of verify that the kids were Austrians, and then I had a chance. The Austrian ambassador who was responsible for Burma, the whole area was in Karachi Pakistan, and he said, no he can’t do that. It’s against the law as an Austrian to put the kids in my passport.

Inge Sargent:

Then a friend of mine went to Bangkok and through some circumstances which I described in the book he did it. He put the children in a passport saying this is to verify that Mayari is Austrian citizen, next page is to verify that Kennari is an Austrian citizen. Then I was told you have to leave tonight, because the only person who would find, who knows is in India, and all the others are in jail, the ones who knew the law, they are all in jail.

Inge Sargent:

You either leave tonight or you have to wait, because there was only one plane a week that went to the west. We had three hours to pack and then not sure, I didn’t get my passport until we were on the plane, because they kept my passport with the children in it. They said, “No, you are not allowed to take out money, no currency, no jewelry, no documents, no photos, no channels.”

Rosemary P.:

So you had nothing?

Inge Sargent:

Nothing. When we came to Vienna I didn’t even have a dime to make a phone call to my parents, or to take the bus, because the airport in Vienna was DIA was before, there was nothing except an airport. We got there to Vienna and nobody knew, my parents never got the telegram, up to today it hasn’t arrived yet that I was coming. Everybody got off the plane and left. There were people who were either by taxi, or by relatives. I just sat there in a corner with my suitcases, wearing a western outfit suit, which of course the fashion had changed. It was either short or longer, I don’t remember, I think short.

Inge Sargent:

Mine was long because over there I always wore the longi and the angi. I got this and the lapel was wrong, everything was wrong. I just sat in a corner and I thought, I’ll just wait. Mayari and Kennari by that time they were eight, and five. They had never in their lives seen revolving doors that opened by … What do you call it? Self opening doors. They were fascinated and they ran in and out and in and out over there, and I was sitting in the corner. Everybody had left.

Inge Sargent:

There comes a ground stewardess for Pan Am, Pan-Am when you flew there. She comes down in the main hall, and says something to Mayari. Mayari pointed at me, and then she kept running. Then this woman asked her again and Mayari pointed at me and kept running, Kennari, they had a lot of fun. Then that woman came over and said, “Inge is it you?” I said, “Yeah.” I recognized her.

Inge Sargent:

She was our guest about a few months before the coup d’etat had happened. She was the wife of a director of the steel industry in Austria. She recognized Mayari. That was two years later. And asked her, “Aren’t you Mayari from Hsipaw?” She said, “Yes, yes.” She kept running. Second time she said, “Where is your mother?” And then she pointed to me.

Inge Sargent:

This [inaudible 00:40:46] who in the meantime had come a ground stewardess or something for Pan-Am said, “My goodness, we were all worried about you. We knew what happened and so on. How can I help you?” I said, “Actually a little money if you could loan me some money I would be happy.” Then she gave me some money and I called my family, and they were about five hours away by car. I took the bus into hotels into Vienna. All those coincidences.

Rosemary P.:

You were taken care of.

Inge Sargent:

Yeah, and not that I was nervously walking around, but I just said something good is going to happen.

Rosemary P.:

With everything you had been through, not knowing where he was, I just would love to know, how did you go on after that? Besides just having to be there for the girls, what tools were there that you used or practices that helped you get through being under house arrest, having to escape, all of that?

Inge Sargent:

Well, actually it was Buddhist meditation. I always rejected it when Sao was around, because I said, “I don’t believe in Dukkha, I don’t believe life is suffering. I just don’t believe in it.” I was not a catholic anymore, because the Catholics wanted me to promise that the kids would be raised catholic, and that I would do everything to change the religion of my husband.

Inge Sargent:

I said, “I don’t want to promise that.” Then that was the end of catholicism. I really liked a lot of the Buddhist philosophy, not all the practices, because a lot of it is kind of a part of the old Burmese culture. Then Sao always meditated. I must have meditated but not following anybody, just within me, following my heart and what I thought was right.

Inge Sargent:

Then when he disappeared I became a serious practitioner, and I was just about … I couldn’t make decisions. My mind was just not good enough. The decision to leave Burma for Austria, or to stay because I had all this responsibility for the other people. I decided I was not … I needed help, and there was no psychotherapist. There was no psychologist. I went to a Sayadaw and started practicing Vipassanā. I did that, and that made it possible for me to make decisions again, and made my mind sharper. I don’t fit into any of the other practices. I don’t like churches, I don’t like to be members of that community. I do my own.

Rosemary P.:

Do you still do any of those meditations now?

Inge Sargent:

Yes, I do, every evening. I should do more, but I am very satisfied. I made no wrong decisions. I did the right thing, and I followed what I really felt was right, and I followed my heart. Some things turned out differently, but I am at peace with myself.

Rosemary P.:

I asked Inge what happened when she got back to Austria.

Inge Sargent:

First of all, I didn’t stay in Austria. I stayed two years and I couldn’t stand it. One of the major reasons was they would not give me the guardianship for my own children. They said, “You have to have the father’s permission.” I said, “The father is dead.” “Well, if he is dead then you bring the death certificate.”

Inge Sargent:

I said, “Oh yeah, the general who had him assassinated is going to say, “I killed him.” Sure. “If you can’t get the death certificate you get to get his permission.” It went on for two years.

Rosemary P.:

That makes no sense.

Inge Sargent:

Until I met somebody who went to my school, a little senior who was … Had joined the chief court, the chief justice. He was one of the chief justices of Austria. I told him that. Then 10 days later I had the same, but I had already decided I didn’t want to stay in Austria. I said, “I’m going back to the US,” and I had only good experiences here before. I mean, I didn’t know a lot of the bad things about this country. I said I’m going to be … Here I’ll be able to raise children by myself.

Rosemary P.:

When she moved back to Colorado, Inge met her second husband Tad Sargent.

Inge Sargent:

I am a person who does not believe in coincidences, because I had a roommate at the Colorado women’s college from Raton New Mexico. In the meantime her mother moved to Erie Colorado and had to let half of her house to a graduate student. That was Tad. I went once to meet Mrs. Sparks, because her daughter had died. Anyway, I took the two children, and the first semester at Denver I was on a bicycle, only the second I had an old car from somebody.

Inge Sargent:

I took that car, went to Erie Colorado. In the garden, she said, “This is my tenant.” This tall guy. I said, “Okay.” Then I went to CU to get my master’s. There is this tall guy in the library and said, “Do you remember me?” I said, “No. You could be Mrs. Sparks’ tenant, but I am not sure.” We kept running into each other just about every other day, in the post office, in Safeway. Then I remembered him. I somehow feel that Sao had sent him. I really do.

Rosemary P.:

Years ago, Inge did an interview with Janna Graber, in which she said, “I am connected to the Chan people of Burma. I’ve lived with them and lost my heart there. How can I not help them? Someone has to help them.” That’s quite a statement of I lost my heart there. Could you say a little bit more about what you meant by that, and how you managed to open your heart and love again?

Inge Sargent:

I live here and Tad is very very caring. I mean, the care and the love I receive for him, the respect … I love him very much. It was just the feeling that I belonged there, that I had lived there before. And that this was where I was meant to be. That’s where actually my heart is there. My heart is there every day still. The Chan people who, I get calls from them, and there are two actually in Boulder, and Mayari really supports their school fees and so on.

Rosemary P.:

If there any Chan people listening to this right now, anywhere in the world. Is there a message that you would want to send to them, anything you would want to say?

Inge Sargent:

I would say don’t forget your homeland, your culture, be proud of it, and be proud of your history. Keep your meta and your feeling and your heart, keep it where it should be. You may be in another country, but you are still a Chan, you’ll always be a Chan.

Rosemary P.:

That’s beautiful.

Rosemary P.:

You’ve said this word a couple of times now meta, can you explain a little bit about what that is?

Inge Sargent:

Okay. Meta is what I send every day to all beings. Whether they are humans or they are trees or they are animals, or they are in different spheres. It’s a compassion and the love, and an understanding. I don’t think the word love alone translates. Meta is the kind of … It is a love.

Rosemary P.:

I’ve heard it translated as love and kindness. It seems like it’s one of those words that … My reference point is more Tibetan, where there is all these words that there is no way of translating it. It could take years to understand the meaning of that one word.

Inge Sargent:

Meta, it is love, but not alone. It’s very difficult. I mean, it’s just a compassion, I think compassionate love, together, kindness, compassion, love, caring. That’s how I really feel towards mankind. I used to hate the person, and I couldn’t get over it, the person who killed Sao, but he’s dead, and I try … That’s where I have to work. I’m not perfect.

Rosemary P.:

Tell me about the process of writing the book, and what inspired you to do that.

Inge Sargent:

When I first came to the United States, my job was to raise the children, and both … I mean, I started the only way I could be with the children as much as possible was by becoming a teacher. I’m not particularly fond of the German language, but that’s something I knew. And they needed German teachers. I taught school.

Inge Sargent:

I always felt that I needed to write, at least for the family, the story of Sao, and my life in Hsipaw and about the Chan people. Then I said, “Okay.” I shocked everybody, I said, “I’m going to write about my life.” I needed to write it. I also needed to write it for therapy so that I could live with, because some of those … Some of the events in my life were pretty hard, and pretty tough to kind of digest, and to live with. Tad was my main editor, and I would write in the evening.

Inge Sargent:

Of course, he’s an engineer, so he said there is a way to write. You have to have an outline. I said, “No, I just write this and that, and then I put it together.” In the evening I would write, and print it out, and in the morning he would read it. He’s a big reader, and he’d say, “Gosh, this looks like a real author wrote it.”

Rosemary P.:

The book is actually … It’s really good.

Inge Sargent:

He encouraged me. I owe a lot to him, because if any husband in a marriage said no. He was very supportive and very encouraging. I had to write the book. I didn’t first think of having it published. We did have some problems, and your grandfather helped. I mean, he was a tremendous help. It all worked together, I don’t know how, but it came out. Now the Chan people who come … There were actually some who had to pay their fare, they were in some institute in Texas, the Bush Institute. I’ve never heard of that before.

Inge Sargent:

They had to pay their own way to come and see me just recently. That was another group. They said that my book is their only history they have of those times. It was meant to be a history book, because I did not … I couldn’t get the permission of people to use their names, except when they were dead. I gave some people wrong names, and yet they came and thanked and said, “This is the only history we have of our culture and of our life, and I am very proud of that.”

Rosemary P.:

Tell me more about the catharsis of writing it and what did that for you.

Inge Sargent:

The whole process of writing made me remember and face what had happened. Before there were some instances, and some events which I tried to just put aside. When you write you can’t, you have to really delve into your feelings. And that was really a catharsis and it helped me tremendously later, and I could talk about it. Before there were certain things I couldn’t talk about.

Rosemary P.:

To this day it’s not safe for Inge to return to Burma. In 1999, she and Tad started an organization called Burma Lifeline, so that she could still have a way to help the Burmese people from across the world.

Inge Sargent:

We had a board of directors, but we were running the whole thing. He did all the internet stuff, and I did the money raising. We helped people who try to escape from there, and raise money. I spoke, I don’t know how many times people ask me to come. They still do. We raised over $1,000,000, which is not easy here, almost $2,000,000. When I turned 80 I said, “I can’t do it anymore.” Tad said, he couldn’t do it alone. Then we merged with a group in San Francisco, The Partners Asia.

Inge Sargent:

We gave them the money that we had left, and they are giving now a Sao Thusandi Leadership Award every year. That’s like, not in response, like the MacArthur Grant. There are outstanding people who promise that when it’s possible to return to the Chan state, where they lived, they don’t have to be Chans, because they are other minorities. They get a stipend, like $4,000 now. It was 3,000 free, and no strings attached, and a certificate and a celebration. This will be the 10th year that we have done that.

Rosemary P.:

Are there ways in which those 10 years of being royalty still affect who you are today, that you notice?

Inge Sargent:

Well, I am the same person. I feel a commitment to my people, and I feel if they need help that I help as much as I can. I belong there. I am one of them.

Rosemary P.:

What gifts did Sao give to your life?

Inge Sargent:

Love. He gave me unconditional love, and a togetherness, a kind of almost a merging of two people into one. Of course, he gave me the children. He has given me a different perspective I think. He’s given me a perspective that is kind of boundless. I would say that he has given me a perspective of we are all one. We are all the same. You have to be accepting, you have to be loving, you have to be caring.

Rosemary P.:

To learn more about the Chan people, the history of Burma or a more detailed account of Inge’s story, I highly recommend reading her book Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Chan Princess. The link is in the show notes.

Rosemary P.:

If you’d like to support efforts to help the people of Burma, please visit the website for the organization that took on Burma Lifeline after Inge and Tad retired, Partners Asia. Also in the show notes.

Rosemary P.:

Thank you for listening to A Show of Hearts. If you enjoyed what you heard, please subscribe in iTunes, and share it with your favorite people. Visit our website ashowofhearts.com, where you can sign up for emails and explore all our episodes in depth. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at A Show of Hearts. Remember to choose courage even when it’s scary, and join me in igniting the world with our hearts.

Rosemary P.:

(singing).