The public solemnities lasted for three days ‒ though the private preparations took far longer. What was unseen was the ritual washing and dressing of the body, the six days of mourning vigil by monks. In the daughter’s case, a raft of duties: booking catering services, including staff and equipment; ordering and preparing food and drink; buying a range of appropriate presents; decking out the temple with gilded casket, flowers and framed photographs; installing a sound system; above all, trying to make sense both of family differences and labyrinthine finances.
My partner, the elder daughter, slept on the spartan floor for a week, beside herself with anxiety the entire time, trying to balance the books (mostly family contributions in sealed white envelopes ), and ultimately failing. One rogue relative had absconded with half the government grant intended for the occasion.
I arrived on the afternoon of the first day, the fun day, with ‘solemnity’ assuredly not an appropriate word. Collective heads swivelled to focus on Mr Moneybags, enthusiastically welcomed to a party already in high spirits and full swing: 20 tables, each laden with five or six different local dishes ‒ from pork bone stew and vegetable soup to curried chicken. Bottled water, ice, Leo beer and Sangsom rum flowed all evening.
Western funerals are sombre events – hence the epithet ‘funereal’ ‒ but this was party time. And the partying ‘family’ was an extended one: everyone in the neighbourhood seemed to have turned up to enjoy the free food and drink, everyone from posses of excited children to stick-wielding old men. Two male groups, one hunched over playing cards, the other involved in a board game with dice, spent the evening gambling. They were the last to leave. Gaming for money is rigorously forbidden by law in Thailand , but here was a chance to gamble in the certain knowledge that the police would not come near the place. I thought of Christ expelling the money-changers from the temple, raging that a house of prayer had become a house of trade. Here, nobody turned a hair…
The obsequies on the following day were in stark contrast. Presided over by saffron-clad monks, the chanting of the ‘Adhidhamma’ was hypnotic, a ritual allied to the Buddhist celebration of the cycle of life, death and ultimate rebirth. The sense of a spiritual journey to mark the soul’s tranquil transition to the next realm was moving, the atmosphere palpable, with the whole community of worshippers profoundly involved in a meditation little changed since time immemorial. Black-clad devotees paid homage to the gilded coffin, and made merit with gifts.
Inevitably, there were some concessions to changing times. Throughout the ceremony mourners scurried around taking photographs with their mobile phones; at the conclusion, an engineer removed speakers that had pumped out recorded chanting, and disconnected the fairy lights from impressive banks of yellow and white plastic roses. Back to a world of everyday…
In conclusion, the gilded casket was lifted down, and borne aloft on its short, terrestrial journey to the ‘men’ (crematorium). Minutes later, tell-tale swirls of smoke emerged from the chimney. It only remained for the dutiful daughter to return to inspect the ashes, something my ‘farang’ sensibilities would not allow me to do. Her mother’s bones, I was informed, were ‘lovely and white’ – apparently a good omen…
I came back to Phuket with a battered wallet, and eight passengers in the pickup, including a baby and a motorbike – travellers too poor to afford the bus fare back to Phuket, where they eke out an existence.
Life ‒ and death ‒ still goes on, and so does poverty…. Heigh ho.