I doubt that anybody was too surprised when the tanks rolled through the streets of Bangkok last year except perhaps Doctor Taksin himself, he of the invincible luck and the impenetrable skin, ready to speak at the UN while the ground crumbled beneath him back home. This is how things are done, after all, in banana republics, where big ideas are planted in infertile soil, and democracy is left to its own devices in a culture barely literate. Thailand is the field of dreams, after all, just build the stadium first and the players will rise to the occasion somehow. Such a situation is ripe for a ‘big man’ populist promising favors, and so the Taksins, Juan Perons, and Huey Longs prey on the hopes and dreams of its mostly rural populace, doling out petty favors in return for undying loyalty, pennies on the dollar. To this day Taksin still has great support in Thailand, especially in the rural and northern areas, something which banning his party won’t change. After all Taksin created the party, not vice-versa. Buddhist passivity doesn’t help much in the political arena either, as easily seen in Burma, when people are easily convinced that good comes to the good and bad comes to the bad some how some way, though not likely in some Newtonian cause-effect equation, but almost certainly in some magical incomprehensible quantum effect. If it were comprehensible, then it wouldn’t be Thailand. And you can expect Taksin back at some point, if not before, then after the King dies. We may even want him at that point. After all, Thailand needs a Pa, and you know what the choices are. We’ll see what happens with the upcoming election.
Of course sometimes things go too far. Even my wife, not known for her political liberalism, gasped when I told her that Duangchalerm Yubamrung had been acquitted a few years ago. This son of a prominent politician not only shot a policeman in the head at point-blank range in a crowded bar, all for the crime of his foot having been stepped on, but then left the country while the police waited for him to turn himself in. After a trail that apparently led to Cambodia then Malaysia, he finally showed up after many months had passed, and stood trial for the crime. By then of course nobody ‘really remembered what had happened,’ and the young man was acquitted. Compared to this, OJ was innocent. As daddy said, “even a mother cat protects her kittens.” His son then entered a monastery and all was presumably made right with God and the world. Welcome to Thailand. But my favorite is the one about the prostitution king-pin and real-estate mogul who gave his short-term tenants notice of termination by razing their stalls one night as they slept. He later explained that he didn’t raze them; the demolition company did. As his case gained publicity and the details of his bribes to local officials for prostitution gained attention, he responded by running for the Senate. He won, of course. Thais respect a man with wealth even if the money comes from their own pockets.
So the conclusion to the popular soap opera Pruksasawart shouldn’t have come as any surprise last Sunday night. In this long-running series a young up-country girl goes to live with a prominent Bangkok family, where the older middle-age brother proceeds to fall in love with her. So does everybody else, of course, including the younger brother closer to the girl’s age. She likewise falls in love with him, but by this time, the older brother has already claimed his prize, and, for some reason that I can’t remember, his rights have priority. Well, the young girl spent most of every show crying, I’m sure including and even during the conjugal visit in which the act of engagement was consummated. Well, of course other things had to happen to pass the necessary nine months to bring this little love-child to full term, so another woman has to intercede and cause all kinds of shenanigans. The little fiancee’ keeps crying right up to the end, when in some flash of sympathetic magic, the girl decides that the older man is indeed her true love, even though he’s kept her locked up for most of a year, forced her into unwilling sex, and refused to allow her even the most minimal freedom to follow her own path. This is the happy ending that everyone wanted, except for the younger brother, of course, and the fact that he would’ve gotten the girl if this melodrama had been set in Western Europe or the US is little consolation. After all, these absurd circumstances would never have even occurred in a Western country.
Women marry for money here all the time. It has little to do with Farangs or globalization, just as slavery in Africa had little to do, initially at least, with those same Europeans or even the African war chiefs who took war prisoners and then offered them for sale as slaves. It’s just that the price of a human was well-established, just as it is in Thailand to this day. Last time I checked that was about $3k for a Farang and about half that for a Thai, though inflation has probably upped the ante. Marriage is more creative than that, of course, with multiple payment options and long-term financing available. That flat-rate ‘ante’ is usually more of a ‘post’, blood money to be paid in the case of accidental death. This is the reason that when Thais run somebody over accidentally, they might back up and do it again for the coup de grace; it’s neater and cheaper and if push comes to shove it’s still only the difference between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. Or so the pundits say. They also say that a Farang will never collect any money when a Thai causes a traffic accident, that by definition it’s the foreigner’s fault. I did collect, however, when a thirteen-year-old caused my motorcycle wreck. I swerved hard to avoid slamming into him and his three-year-old sister when they cut in front of me on a major highway. They got scratches. I got traction. Welcome to the dark side.
Once, shortly after our marriage, I jokingly referred to myself as my wife’s ‘owner’. “That’s right!” she responded. “How did you know that?” I swear to God she looked disappointed when I told her that I was joking. Pop songs use the term frequently in reference to relationships. This is the background against which planned marriages and marriages-to-order occur. It’s little wonder that half of all marriages here fail, and even less of a wonder that blood relationships are more important than the artificial relationship of marriage. You’re not likely to reject your own blood kin, though marriages are always subject to re-negotiation. Do Asians not feel the same emotions as us Westerners? I have a theory that tonal languages tend toward tonal emotion, i.e. since inflection of pitch is rigidly prescribed for pronunciation, it is therefore incapable of being used to show feeling. In the process feeling becomes more rigid, if not actually reduced. The only pitch modulation left for emotion is volume, more or less, louder or softer. I better leave that one for later. I could talk all night, and I don’t need a fight, not with some Chomskyite. Nope.
