Rangoon Calling

Insight Myanmar · Jul 28, 2026 · 1h 42m

Episode #579: “I did not expect to be conversing in Urdu with someone in Yangon.” Bilal Hassan, a Pakistani creator and doctor, traveled to Burma after noticing how much of Karachi’s everyday culture carried unexplained Burmese traces: khao suey, family names, old songs about Rangoon, and stories no one could quite complete. His trip began as a search for those missing links, but Yangon gave him something more complicated than recognition.

The city felt to him like the place where South Asia and Southeast Asia meet, with Urdu-speaking caretakers at Bahadur Shah Zafar’s shrine, Surti and Memon…