Further to my previous posts on the current political humpty-dumpty in Bangkok, we seem to have a thickened plot oozing all over the road and clogging up the sewers (even more than usual, I mean). Preliminary forensic analysis suggests the goo is voodoo.

Everybody’s into it these days as the election looms, animism once again making its presence felt in this nominally Buddhist country, which is fine, of course, but it does get a little freaky at times.

First, The Nation – keen to look fair, I’m guessing – gave acting deputy prime minister Chidchai Wannasathid a chunk of its front page yesterday to apply counter-spin to the astrologers’ lament that the destruction of the Brahma statue in the city’s famed Erawan Shrine early Tuesday morning basically dooms the country to horrors too horrible to think about.

Nonsense, said Police General Chidchai, the holy image’s destruction by an allegedly deranged Muslim fella was actually a good thing, see? That’s because the god took a hit for the country, sacrificing itself to end the political turmoil.

“I have talked to an astrologer [another one, not the earlier ones] who told me that the incident could be seen as a self-sacrifice of [the god] Phra Phrom. The situation should now start to improve,” he said.

A bunch of government bigwigs had a gawk at the shrine, which at the moment looks like Christo’s been round with his wrapping paper, and promised to fix it right quick. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra burnt some incense, said a prayer and set free a lucky nine sparrows to make merit (photo by AP). The birds no doubt found their way straight back into someone else’s cage to await the next customer, but I digress.
The thickening in this stew comes at the end of The Nation’s story, where it quotes Sondhi Limthongkul of the anti-Thaksin People’s Alliance for Democracy as smelling something fishy out loud.

“Why was the man stomped to death after he smashed the statue? I have in-depth information about someone who is deeply obsessed with superstition. He wants to destroy Thao Maha Phrom so that he can rebuild it by himself and then bury ‘his stuff’ in the statue. This is a way to avert ill omens,” Sondhi said, making it clear he was talking about Thaksin, pictured here in a sweat in a Nation photo.

Too clear for The Nation, perhaps, which noted “a rumour that a high-ranking politician has linked his own luck with Phra Phrom at both Government House and Erawan Shrine, so that when people worship the Brahma statues, they also pray for his long life and power”.

Well, who knows, eh? But it is pretty dumbfounding that the two city street sweepers who beat to death Thanakorn Pakdeepol after he smashed the statue to bits with a hammer were bailed out by the official who runs that part of the capital, and went straight back to work.

“We will seek ways to help them out because what they did was aimed at protecting the Great Brahma statue,” the official said. “They did not intend to kill the man.” Except of course that they chased Thanakorn a fair distance before catching him and putting him on the same bus to heaven as the bewildered god.

Meanwhile, Thaksin fuelled the rumours of his own superstitiousness by wheeling through the Government House gates yesterday at exactly 9.19am, for the second day in a row. Nine is lucky in Asia – it signifies “going forward”. This comes a week or so after the premier supposedly underwent some tribal hocus pocus down east on the campaign trail, the gist of which I didn’t catch, but his opponents decided to counter whatever it was by having women at their mass rallies pass photos of Thaksin between their legs. Uh huh.

Then a newspaper in Shan State, in northern Burma, chipped in with the observation that Thaksin had popped across the border last week, ostensibly to thank some blokes waiting at the other end of the bridge for helping out with his War on Drugs, but actually (it said) to enact an animist rite aimed at ensuring he would never be forced out of his own country.

I dunno, it sounds to me like a typical “visa run” for any expat living here, and with that, there’s never any guarantee that we won’t get kicked out.

“Bangkokian” is a weekly column in The Nation, and the other day it had this to say:
The Thaksin Era, characterised by unfettered capitalism and greedy economic growth, has also been beset by bad omens. They manifest themselves in different forms, symbols and natural disasters. If a leader does not practise virtue, and learning is absent among the populace, society will head into a series of crises.
One of the natural disasters in the Thaksin Era manifested itself as a plague destroying the city, or ha kin muang. We witnessed Sars and subsequently bird flu. Then water started to flood the world, or nam thuam lok. This manifested itself in the tsunami which killed more than 100,000 people in Thailand and elsewhere around the Indian Ocean.

People are facing greater hardship in their lives, a period characterised by skyrocketing prices for basic necessities (khao yak mak phaeng). Another bad omen is phan din look pen phai (land turns into fire), which has been happening to Thailand’s three southernmost provinces. There, murders take place every day.

And people are also suffering from phan din yaek (cracks in the land), as they take sides in fiercely opposed political opinions. The angel has taken flight from the city. This is reflected in the destruction of the Phra Phrom statue.

Phew! Bangkokian also pointed out that during olde Siam’s Ayutthaya period, which preceded the founding of Bangkok, King Narai the Great (or someone like him) prophesied that city’s fall a century before it did in 1767. He listed 16 bad omens that would appear, and our columnist attempted to draw modern comparisons with every single one of them. Beats going out in the heat and actually gathering news.

Is there anything nice happening in Thailand? Yes, as a matter of fact. General Sonthi Boon-yaratglin, the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Army, met Thaksin this week and “assured” him that the massive anti-Thaksin rallies posed no threat to national security. “The protesters have remained peaceful and abided by the law,” The Nation quoted the general as quoting himself as saying. “This is historic in a global context. I believe the demonstration is the most peaceful in the world and should be recorded in the ‘Guinness Book of World Records’.”

A world record for not being crazy. There you go.

The Brahma shrine has sat in front of the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel since November 9, 1956, and it’s had quite an edgy history right from the start. The clots of people who always mill around it to pay obeisance and pray for their wishes to be fulfilled – including Thai Buddhists and boatloads of tourists from Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong – may or may not know that it started out as just another spirit house, albeit one specifically designed to break a curse.

The owners of the original Erawan Hotel, pictured here circa 1963 (the hotel, not the owners, and thanks 2Bangkok.com!), erected the thing after several workers lost their lives there in mysterious construction accidents. There were no more tragedies after that, so stick that in your sceptical pipe.
The hotel took its name from Brahma’s 33-headed elephant, and Than Tao Mahaprom – the Brahma incarnation depicted at the shrine – has four faces, one each for the virtues of kindness, mercy, sympathy and impartiality. People buy flowers, lotus buds, incense, candles and teak elephants (which can be tiny or quite huge) and pay a squad of classical dancers and musicians to help them get their wish.

It’s quite a money-maker, this shrine, but thankfully the dough goes to the Than Tao Mahaprom Foundation and thence, purportedly, to rural hospitals.

According to HotelThailand.com, the Thai government and business people were left scrambling when the country was chosen to host a massive international conference and the only decent hotels were the Trocadero, the Ratanakosin and the venerable Oriental, then in the throes of a makeover. So the government built the Erawan, but stupidly started on an inauspicious date. Governments, huh!? Everything went wrong, including the loss of a shipload of Italian marble. Someplace. I didn’t see it, did you?

This website makes no mention of any construction workers getting killed, so maybe that’s just a legend, but they did go on strike until something was done to appease the spirits of that particular property. An astrologer who also happened to be a real admiral (!) discovered the bad timing involved and recommended building a shrine to Brahma and a shrine to the land spirit.

Once upon a time, the website continues, a certain woman promised the god that she’d dance naked in front of it in the moonlight if she got her wish. She did, and so she did – behind a specially erected screen – but folks were not amused, because dancing naked in front of gods might have been okay for the ancient Greeks, but there’s something cheesy about it the Far East. So these days that sort of thing is discouraged.

The power of Brahma in front of the Erawan Hotel is perceived to be so enormous, yet another website says, that a few years ago when Central Pattana Plc took over the nearby World Trade Centre (renamed Central World after a certain incident in New York), it decided to dedicate a shrine of its own to the Hindu trinity that included Brahma, in a bid to ward off any possible business misfortune. But they got it wrong. Uh-oh!

Here’s a Google Earth image showing the Erawan Shrine, the semi-circle at top right, and Central World in the left foreground.

The initial problem was that one of the faces of the mighty Erawan Brahma was facing the World Trade Centre, so the Trimurti shrine was deemed necessary to curb its influence. But the Trimurti shrine was built without the trio of gods holding any weapons, so how in hell were they supposed to defend the joint?
So Central World erected another shrine, this one to Ganesh, the god of accomplishment, wisdom and success, on the other side of its shopping complex, and, yes, this one’s an elephant too.
Finally, in recent years teenagers have taken a shine to the Trimurti shrine, mistakenly thinking it’s a chapel of love. They come begging for sex and stuff, as teenagers will, but the Hindu threesome evidently don’t care a whiff about romance.
They only care about magic. Me too.