Emerald or Jade?

Ascension Day:  The Roman Catholic Church seems to be thriving here in Bangkok.  I attended the English-language mass at Assumption Cathedral this morning.  It was Ascension Day, the 40^th day after Easter Sunday.  Even though it was a huge basilica-style church, there was standing room only.  Amazing, considering there was no air conditioning, just fans overhead and along the side aisles.  The priest sounded like he came from the United States.  At other times on Saturday and Sunday, there are also masses in Thai.  In addition to the cathedral, there is Assumption College, where children of Bangkok come for an education.  Just for your information:  in much of the world, the word college means a school you go to before you go to University.  The children at Assumption College wear uniforms, but so do all of the kids in government schools.

The Emerald Buddha:  On the grounds of the Royal Palace is the temple of the Emerald Buddha.  But, the effigy is really made of jade.  To confess, I went through this temple and didn’t see a Buddha at all, so I figured I had the wrong building.  I checked my map and discovered it was the right one.  I went back in and looked up.  I had expected to see a figure that was more than life size, but this one isn’t.  It is torso-sized and sits atop a pyramid of gold that lifts it almost to the ceiling.  For a single piece of jade, however, it is huge. As usual, though, all you get in the official narrative is a bunch of bland facts.  So, why is the emerald Buddha the central focus of the monastery that surrounds it and why is it in the royal palace at all?  Here is my far more interesting (though hypothetical) story line.  The jade image comes from Thailand’s far north.  It once graced the royal palaces of the King of Chiang Mai and the King of Laos.  Both were conquered by the southern Thai kingdom, and the unique green image of Buddha was installed in the new capital of Bangkok.  To me, it is all symbolic.  When you conquer territory, you need to advertise how powerful you are.  As monarch, you find the most treasured artifacts of the conquered lands, and you bring them in your own capital city.  The emerald Buddha is in Bangkok as booty, the spoils of conquest.  If you are an Anglophile, think Stone of Scone, now repatriated.  But on the part of neither Thailand nor Laos is there a repatriation movement.  I see no reason, though, why Laos should not call for a return of their patrimony, since the image resided in Vientiane for 226 years.  Besides, asking for your treasures back seems to be a theme of 21^st century cultural geography.

You still don't know why they call this jade Buddha, the emerald Buddha, but that's an interesting story, too.  One you will have to look up!

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

Socks and Sea Shells

It was raining this morning and showery this afternoon, so a down day it was.  I did accomplish three things, however.

Red Curry:  I love Thai food in the United States but the only thing I ever order is red curry.  My objective was to compare authentic red curry here with what I can order at home.  At noon I stumbled upon a sit-down restaurant serving “authentic” Thai food, so here was my chance.  The red curry I ordered had three of the same ingredients I am used to:  tomatoes, basil, and bamboo shoots in a coconut-milk broth, served with white rice.  Alas, it paled in comparison to Bangkok Gardens in Norfolk!  Yes, we have the world’s best Thai restaurant at home.  By the way, don’t do what I have just did when you travel:  compare everything to what you are used to in the States.  It’s very bad practice, very ethnocentric, and not endearing to the locals.  But, I sometimes do it anyway.  Far better was the hot-and-sour coconut soup I had in the evening.  Where? At Jameson’s Irish Pub.  Forgive me.  I had to eat there because my favorite Celtic band in the United States is “The Fighting Jamesons.”  You should look them up on Facebook.

Holey Socks:  I guess I am hard on socks because I’ve got some holes appearing.  One I had mended in Delhi.  Two others I had mended today here.  Sidewalk culture is vivid in Bangkok.  If you want to start a business, you start on the street and maybe eventually get a shop.  Among the entrepreneurs are women who sit at sewing machines (the old Singers with foot pedals) spending their day mending.  They usually have a big plastic bag of clothes beside them, but I have no idea where all the mending comes from.  I interrupted one seamstress today, presented her with my socks, and in front of my eyes the holes disappeared.  She was slick.  The difference between Bangkok and Delhi?  Man vs. woman.  Here, women working in the shops (and elsewhere) are as common as men.  The old sewing machines were pretty much the same vintage, however.  My regret?  That I have to wear socks at all, which means that I have to wear long pants (anathema), so shoes and socks complete the outfit.  Short pants just don’t cut it here or in India.  In fact, I asked my hotelier in Delhi if he thought I could get away with wearing shorts.  “No,” said he in so many words.

Shell Nostalgia:  When I was a kid I had a pretty good seashell collection (thanks to my dad).  So, I had to visit the Bangkok Seashell Museum, all three floors of it.  These micro-museums I often (maybe usually) find more satisfying than the huge showpiece varieties that are de rigueur for tourists.  (Remember my trip to the Museum of Garden History in London?)  For me, seeing seashells was a trip down memory lane.  I had shells from all the major groups I saw today, and can still remember how I struggled to identify them in the days before Web technology.  I also remembered that the prettiest ones came from the Indian and southwest Pacific Oceans.  So, thought I, Bangkok is the perfect place for such a show. The displays were well proportioned and well lighted, and photography was allowed.  My discovery:  there is a cone shell called Conus geographus, I guess because the squiggly brown lines reminded Linnaeus of a map.  I would adopt it as my personal shell except this cone shoots a poisonous venom into fish and then eats them.  Not good symbolism.  So, since everyone should have a shell to incorporate into their personal coat of arms, I will keep looking.  Conus mercator might be a possibility.  No, that one is poisonous, too.  Plus, the Mercator projection is a cylindrical projection, not a conic.  I also learned how porcelain got its name: it comes form the Roman name for the cowrie shells (porcellana, from the word for pig) that Marco Polo brought back from the East.  They were both shiny.  My shell collection?  I have no idea whatever became of it, and now I feel bad about it.

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

Canal Lizards

The Chao Phraya:  Bangkok sits on the Chao Phrayha River, opposite the former Thai capital of Thonburi.  It was moved there by Rama the Great whose dynasty still rules.  You know the fictionalized account of Rama IV, “King of Siam,” and his quarrels with Anna.  I had a chance today to see Thonburi on a longtail boat via a khlong (canal) that arcs through the city. 

There’s a perplexing array of ferries and private-hire boats that run the Chao Phraya.  With a little observation, though, the system becomes legible enough.  I stepped onto my boat at its southern-most stop not far from Silom Road and rode it to a stop I had identified as the Flower Market. Here, sidewalks and streetsides are crammed with flower arrangers and wholesale vendors in every direction. Garlands of marigolds and jasmine flowers were being sewn together with needle and thread.  (The whole experience made me think of the pathetic flower market in Amsterdam, and how good it could be.  Yes, the Dutch should come to Thailand to see how to fluoresce in flowers.)  Here in Thailand, there is a good climate for flowers, cheap labor for growing them, and a ready market for selling them.  Although Thais seem not to have much money, there always seems to be plenty for posies.  It reminded me of an old Persian proverb: ‘If you have two pennies, spend one for the body and with the other buy hyacinths for the soul.’  Indeed, in Thailand, a large segment of the flower market seems to be for salving for the soul.  All over the city are temples, shrines, and spirit houses at which people stop to pray.  To them, they often bring offerings, and flowers are the most popular.   Thus, around every big temple, there is a small flower market, and these small flower markets make their wholesale buys at the central market I visited today.  It is one block away from the Chao Phraya, and I understand that many of the stalls are operated by people who come by boat from Thonburi on the left bank.  To me, it looks like the original flower market was not along the street but on the sois (a soi is a side street) and the interiors of blocks.  That space now is taken by the wholesale produce market, which is also a fascinating operation, to which everyone comes to buy their fresh fruits and vegetables in large quantities.  Here’s the pattern:  main streets: flowers; side streets and block interiors:  fruits and vegetables.  All streets:  packed with people.  In fact, because there are so many people, street food is available everywhere:  from fruits and drinks to hot foods in kettles and on the grill.  I just wish I knew the names of these palate pleasers.  If labeled at all, the names are in Thai, and most of these vendors do not speak English.  I discovered a way to figure out fruit names, though:  go into a modern supermarket, find the same fruits, and read the English names.  One of the most intriguing fruits was one I wished I knew the name of.  Using my supermarket technique, I discovered it was the Vietnamese Dragon Fruit.  Don’t you just love that name?  It reminds me of Virginia Beach and its very own dragon – but more on that later.

From the oh-so-interesting wholesale markets I ventured into the Bangkok’s temple precinct and tourist mecca, the quarter where you find the Royal Palace and Emerald Buddha, the museums, and government offices.  Very beautiful, but I feel sorry for tourists who make this their only view of Bangkok.  I will go another day.  But another market was flourishing outside the temple precinct: the market in Buddhist amulets, little charms whose popularity is associated with a monk whose temple is across the river. 

In my attempt to find my way back home, I asked a man waiting with me to cross the street where the Metro was.  Take the ferry back was his advice.  But we got talking and then spent the rest of the afternoon together.  He teaches sociology at a secondary school associated with one of the temples.  He was a former Buddhist monk (for about 10 years, until age 22), and is still intent on practicing Buddhism, not just ritualizing it.  Most Thais, he hold me, don’t really apply Buddhist teachings to their lives; they just go through the motions.  Same everywhere, said I.  He was quite proud of the city, especially of its over 200 temples, and suggested I go on a canal ‘cruise’ that would take me through the oldest parts of Thonburi.  If I didn’t do it in the afternoon, the flood-control gates would close and the boats would not be able to get in.  Did he want to go with me?  Yes, he did, so off we went on a huge boat, and just for us. 

The canal-side built environment is deteriorating; it’s an historical preservation project just waiting to happen.  Perhaps it has already started, as a few new teak houses have sprouted up along its shore, but most of the housing is badly deteriorated.  What isn’t deteriorated are the temples, of which there were too many to count and so many different styles.  We stopped at a majestic and colorful one I would characterize as a “mixed-use” community center.  There was a multitude of individual shrines, a troop of boy scouts sitting for lessons, a pair of crematoriums for disposing of the dead (but save a bone fragment).  One boxed-body was in repose and in a pavilion next door a prayer vigil was being kept.  This goes on for a few days, and then the body is cremated.  There were other boats in the canal, but not as many as I expected, though I did buy a small model from one of the boat women.  What my friend reveled in pointing out were the monitor lizards that lived along the canal:  huge ones!  It made me nostalgic for my home in Virginia Beach, where we have our own Komodo Dragon, and for my favorite Starbucks where Komodo Dragon is my favorite coffee.

The Cute Mute:  Without saying a word today, I bought a small silk print showing three elephants.  I usually don’t buy such things, but the man who sold it to me was a mute (and maybe deaf).  He did all his bargaining with body language supplemented with pad and pencil.  His cart (all kinds of silk prints) was all by itself, he had no customers, and he provided the most interesting side show of the day.  Once we settled on a [too high] price, I gave him a big bill for a small purchase; he took it and ran (of course, without saying a word).  He had to get change.  It is the universal story in most of the world:  nobody has change!  I figured I had his cart as collateral.  Had anyone been nearby, I would have tried to sell them something.  I got my change, but was reminded of the time in Morocco when I wasn’t so lucky.  That vendor knew that all he had to do was be off with my big bill and stay until the bus I was riding departed.

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

Temples and Spirit Houses

A modern rail line connects the airport with center city Bangkok: Oh, that Washington could come here and feel the shame of not having the Metro extend out to Dulles! 

Silom Road:  This section of Bangkok used to be on the outskirts of the city, its landscape that of canals, rice fields and wind mills.  Now, it is the financial quarter of modern Bangkok.  One of the sights of Silom Road is the Hindu temple called Wat Khaek Silom.  It was built by south Indians (specifically, Tamils) and looks nothing like the north Indian temples I have been seeing in India.  It is intricate and colorful both outside and in, but it does have a typical tapering top.  On the streets all around are vendors selling flowers and other offerings for those who plan to pray.  Thailand is not a Hindu nation, but migrants from India have been arriving for centuries.  Plus, I am discovering that the line between Hinduism and Buddhism is very blurry.  The deity of the spirit houses in this neighborhood all look like Hindu gods to me.  They are, someone told me, but they have equivalents in Buddhism.  The four-faced Hindu god is the same as the four-faced Buddha.  Boundary lines don’t seem to matter much here.  In fact, within a few hundred meters of the temple is a masjid (a.k.a., mosque) for Muslims (Mirasuddeen mosque) and a church for Christians.  Bangkok is actually more diverse than I thought it would be, but my view may be biased by the thin slice of the city I have seen thus far, just Silom Road, which has always been a focus of foreign businesses

Outside almost every condominium, office complex, and hotel is a spirit house where prayers are offered and offerings left.  Flowers are the most popular, but also a glass of juice or something else just purchased from the local 7-11.  Yes, 7-11.  I wandered into a small grocery store to buy something to drink (very hot here), and when I went to check out I discovered it was a 7-11.  That was after I just arrived, and now I see 7-11s everywhere.  Do you think it is a US chain?  Think again.  It was bought by a Japanese company, so it is really more at home here in Thailand than in the U.S.  The original one, though, was in Dallas as I recall.  By the way, Tesco (so common in London) is also here in large numbers, and Boots is, too.

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

IndiGO

The Gateway of India:  This arch is where India begins.  Doesn’t it just look European and imperial?  It was built to commemorate the state visit of King George V to his Indian dominions in the early 20^th century.  Despite its colonial baggage, the Indian people flock to it during their holidays (which is what it is right now; most schools are not in session).  Wherever people are gathered, opportunities to make money present themselves.  Providing food and thirst quenchers are the most obvious; booklets and postcards, too.  I had a huge cucumber, peeled and quartered.  It was as sweet as the one in Egypt that made me sick years ago (still vivid in my memory, but that one I picked in a field along the Nile and ate it).  It’s amazing how cooling a cucumber can be.  Why do we only eat them in salads?  Hawking photographs may be the most lucrative business here and at India’s other heritage sites, however.  Photographers have invested in good digital cameras and they carry portable color printers with them.  It’s a slick operation.  Harbor cruises are also on sale here. 

Back to Delhi: I had a productive few days in Mumbai.  At least, I got some “office work” done.  You see I brought lots of tasks from home to do on my trip.  I left my very nice Ramada Inn on Juhu Beach and arrived at the airport around 9:30 am for an 11:20 flight on SpiceJet.  Delayed for an hour.   Delayed for two hours.  Delayed for four hours.   I finally arrived in Delhi around 6 pm, but on an Indigo (IndiGO) Airbus.  Spices and Indigo:  what clever semantics for drawing the world into India.  They already have brand recognition.  These two airlines, along with several others, are the budget carriers of the subcontinent and they are thriving. 

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

Shoes

Bidhu:  A simple shoe shine today took charge of my soul.  I was in Colaba, a neighborhood shopping district not far from the famous Nariman Point.  I had no intention of getting my shoes polished, primarily because polish just doesn’t work on brushed leather.  I must admit, though, that in a country like this, any shoes get dirty.  Approached, I was, by a young man who wanted to make my shoes shine.  He seemed to recognize almost immediately that what I really needed was a shoe brush only, so he offered to clean ‘em up for only 2 rupees (that’s a nickel).  At first I said no, but after a city-block of polite harassment, I relented.  A bus stop was nearby.  It provided a place for me to sit, and it was there that Bidhu went to work.  Off came one shoe and his brush took over.  He cleaned it thoroughly; then he did the other.  I didn’t notice at first, but Bidhu was working out of a bag, not a specially-crafted shoe box.  That meant, he explained, that he could not compete in the high-profit zones like CST (the main train station).  In fact, without the box, the police would chase him away.  He had no money to buy a box.  He had been at this job for six months and he still could not afford a box.  When I discovered that his English was extremely good and that he could carry on a conversation without pause, I was inspired to talk to him more.  Where did he learn his English?  At a church.  Was he a Christian?  No, a Hindu.  He was lucky to have such good English lessons.  I told him that with English skills like his he could be doing more than shining shoes.  With his bright disposition, his seeming sincerity, and his intelligence (it came across very early in the conversation), he should be able to get a good job in Mumbai.  He couldn’t, said be, because he had no residence.  He had come to Mumbai from Jaipur, his home city, and had brought his mother and sister with him.  They were living on the sidewalk in a neighborhood by the airport, and he was taking the train (no metro here) to center city each day (for him, probably a free ride since the train largely operates on the honor system).  If he was making a few rupees per shoe shine, he could work all day for the equivalent of a few dollars, maybe enough to feed himself and his family and replenish his polish supply.  He wanted a box desperately and asked me if I would buy him one.  No, said I, but I did give him 100 rupees, rather than the 2 he initially asked for.  Remember, that’s a little more than 2 dollars: nothing, by American standards.  He seemed pleased with my “generosity” and insisted on walking with me for a while, making sure I knew how to get to the Marine Lines train station.  He asked again if I would buy him a shoeshine box, and I said no (as more flimsy thoughts of him being a scam artist went through my head).   How could I be sure he was legitimate?  Bidhu and I parted with a handshake at The Oval.  How guilty I felt.  I thought about the experience for the rest of the day and into the night.  I could have bought him a shoe box for a fraction of what I had paid a few days earlier to go to Agra.  Why didn’t I?  I should have.  I would have, were I to do it again.  I was not a good person today.  Bidhu was 25 years old.

Bidhu had all of the human qualities that could have enabled him to make a substantial contribution to India.  His potential was being wasted.  He could be doing more with his life, and India could be benefiting.  I thought of an advertisement I had seen in The Times of India:  “In pursuit of your parents’ dreams, don’t sacrifice your own.”  As I recall, the ad was sponsored by the newspaper and the mental health counselors of India.  I wondered if Bidhu had sacrificed his own dreams for the sake of his family, the two he had brought with him to Mumbai.  I didn’t ask about his father, but Bidhu might have been the responsible male if dad were gone.   He had made the decision that he could do better for himself in Mumbai.   But, with two more mouths to feed, how could he ever get ahead?  There are hard-working people on the streets on India, but most get virtually nothing for their work.  I just wish someone could harness their energy to the goal of economic development.  Millions of Bidhus could transform the country.

The Dobi-Wallahs:  Not far from Colaba, there is a little fishing village right in the city of Mumbai.  Next to the fishing village is a village of dobi-wallahs.  These are the people who do the laundry for nearby Mumbai:  businesses, hotels, restaurants.  You don’t see it from the street, but the interior of the block is pock-marked by vats of water into which the clothes are thrown.  Looks a lot like the tannery quarters in Middle Eastern cities, but without the smell.  People use their hands, arms, and feet to do the job of the agitator on your home washing machine.  Above the surrounding houses, clothes flap on lines as they dry.  And, there are places where ironing is done as well.  I saw a truck pull up with large sacks of laundry to be washed.  It was unloaded, and porters pulled it into the quarter, where it was apportioned out.  There seemed to be plenty of business and plenty of labor to do the washing.  These are jobs passed down from one generation to another.  Typical of India, however, most of the workers were males.

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.

SpiceJet

Delhi’s Domestic Airport:  I arrived in India at the new international air terminal (built in time for the Commonwealth Games), which is fantastically modern.  I am now at domestic terminal 1 because I am flying to Mumbai. I expected to arrive at a dingy old terminal, but it is totally modern, better than some US airports (LAX comes to mind, dingiest terminal in the US).  There is a laptop station, free wifi connections, a mobile charging station, high-end boutiques (e.g., William Penn The World Pen Store), lots of places to sit, and air-conditioning.  “Voted 4^th best airport in the world” said one placard.  Security is as tight as in the U.S., with separate lanes for men and women.  Everyone gets a pat-down.  The Indians here are not the same ones as I see on the streets in Karol Bagh, though the women are wearing their saris.  Traditional dress among the men is rare.  The airline I am flying is called SpiceJet.  The man I was talking to this morning said that English is the only language that all Indians speak (at least a little, and I know he was exaggerating).  In fact, he said that 20,000 taxi drivers and police were trained in English for the Commonwealth Games last year.  And now, the preferred accent is the American accent.  “It is considered to be sexy,” said he, “especially compared to the British accent.”  I later learned he was a Tamil, hence not a native Hindi-speaker; clearly, he prefers English over Hindi.  As I reflect on it, modern India, educated India, economically prosperous India is entirely English speaking.  India is an English-speaking nation as far as the rest of the world is concerned.  The language was supposed to have been supplanted by Hindi as the language of post-colonial nation-building.  But English never disappeared and, in fact, hauled into the 21^st century no ethnic baggage (in contrast to Hindi, the tongue of the north Gangetic  Plain.  Granted, English was stained by colonialism, but that was two generations ago.  So much has changed.  English has emerged as the language of Indian nation-building.

The drive to the airport was relatively smooth, though we did meet a few cars going the wrong way on the divided highway (happens all the time) and, of course, no one pays any attention to the lane dividers.  At one point, if the window had been open I could have reached out and petted the three cows that were mooning the passing cars.  This highway brings arrivals right into Delhi where they meet a roundabout with new sport-themed mosaics to welcome guests arriving for last year’s competition, now a permanent and prideful part of the landscape.  The Indians seem to have really used the 2010 Games to give themselves an excuse to modernize and aestheticize a bit.

Mumbai:  In case you didn’t know, Bombay is now Mumbai.  Still, you hear people here using ‘Bombay’ frequently.  My 2011 list shows the supermetropolitan area to be the home of 23.3 million people, making it 5^th largest in the world.  Surprisingly, my list gives the Delhi metro a larger population.  Coming in from the air, Mumbai looks like a real city with a New York-style skyline.   While New York is centralized on an island, Bombay is centralized on a peninsula.  Space is at a premium in both.  Most people know that the world’s largest film industry is located here:  Bollywood.  One of the first billboards I noticed hawked the evening TV show Bollywood Tonight.  That has a familiar ring, doesn’t it?

Also on view from the air and from street-level are the shanty-towns.  They seem to be patch-worked into the overall settlement fabric:  a tract of high-rise apartments, then a track of wall-to-wall shanties.   Even along the sidewalks people live in one-room dwellings.  In this city, there are really three Indias, up from the two Indias people spoke about decades ago.  Rather than a poor majority and a rich minority, India now adds a growing middle class.  My friend on the plane today told me that India would be among the strongest economies on earth in the near future, that India had the ability to solve its problems because it was a democracy, and that one day Pakistan might even want to join India (as it was pre-independence).  It would take a generational shift, he admitted.  I must say there is a profound sense of optimism here.  Now, if this country could just muster the energy to clean itself up.  Indians are great engineers and builders, but once a building, road, sidewalk, or park is built, no maintenance is provided.  Everything nice tumbles down quickly.  It the country could harness some of its unexploited labor as maintenance crews, its cities would be more functional and attractive (as some parts of every Indian city already are).  

My afternoon visit to Juhu Beach today made me feel bad.  It is strewn with trash and looks very uninviting. I returned in the evening when the sun had set.  No longer could you see the trash, but you could see throngs of people, vendors, carnival rides for the kids, and a few in the water.  I’ll try to store my evening experience on my hard drive and delete my afternoon memories.

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.