Songkran II

Songkran, as you already know, is the Thai New Year, and like other events and rituals that mark the passage of time, Janus-faced, it looks both backwards and forwards, expanding the present moment to bridge past and future in an attempt to assert some measure of control over the vagaries and contingencies of time.  In looking back at the year just passed, Songkran tries to give it sense of completion through the acts of remembrance and atonement, while at the same time petitioning the as yet indeterminate future for favorable conditions in the year to come.  In this regard, even if the brute facts of the past cannot be altered, their effects and meaning are to some degree conformable to human desire (if not necessarily or always directly so) through intent and effort, as witnessed on the analyst’s couch and in history textbooks among other places.  And even if the future is unknowable, who is to say that the forces that shape it, be they divine, human, or somewhere in between, cannot be appealed to, each act of solicitation like the tiny push of an individual particle that collectively constitute Brownian motion, only in this case all molecules acting in concert and with singular purpose.

I spent last Songkran in Khon Kaen, the unofficial capitol of Isaan, the northeastern region of Thailand, having traveled there with my host parents from Rayong.  At that time I was still wet behind ears in terms of my acquaintance with Thai culture (not that I consider myself any great expert now after just over a year living here), and was about to get a lot wetter, literally speaking, since the original pouring of water on the shoulders of one’s elders as a sign of respect has evolved over the years into a no holds barred community-wide water fight.  (See instructions for your own easy DIY Songkran in my post of April 16 of last year.)  So, let’s just say I did not really experience my first Songkran as anything other than a carnivalesque public festival (and nowadays, marketing opportunity extraordinaire), which is not to say that it wasn’t thoroughly enjoyable.  But I didn’t feel particularly reflective or renewed, mainly just wet.

This year I went to the other city in Thailand most renowned for the enthusiasm of its Songkran celebrations, Chiang Mai, which is in the north about 2 hours from the border with Myanmar.  And while there were definitely similarities to what I experienced in Khon Kaen, I was also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take part in a couple of the more traditional aspects of observing the passage of the year.   As regards the former, the old city of Chiang Mai is basically a big square about .75 miles per side, surrounded by a moat, which during Songkran becomes the primary venue for water-throwing activities.  Traffic slows to a crawl as pickup trucks, tuk-tuks, Chiang Mai’s red songtaews, motorcycles, scooters, cars, and pedestrians run, or rather creep through the gauntlet of block after block of sidewalk and roadside lined with people gleefully giving their super-soaker waterguns a thorough workout and/or throwing bowls- and bucketsful of water on all passersby, who generally are only all too happy and prepared to reciprocate.  The most dedicated of the celebrants make this circuit of the city, or dutifully man their roadside posts as the case may be, all day long. 

There are also stages set up at various points, and I spent the better part of one afternoon sitting in the 2^nd floor of a Starbucks overlooking the Thaphrae Gate, which is the eastern entrance to the old city.  It served as a good, dry perch from which to witness the proceedings, which included a giant foam machine at the Coca Cola stage and a bubble-blowing one at Bangkok Airways.  It was interesting to let the individual details blur together and just try to watch the flow of people, to see if any discernible pattern emerged as the songs changed on various stages, knots formed, as pitched water battles ensued briefly, and then dissolved again.  This being the final official day of Songkran (unofficial water-throwing can extend a few days on either side of the official dates), there was a closing parade with representatives from each of the 25 districts in Chiang Mai province.  These included everyone from the district “mayor” and other community leaders, to traditional dancers, to children on small horses.  (We had intended to watch the opening parade as well but missed it because my friend had underestimated the extent to which traffic would come to a standstill, and we ended up sitting just outside the city limits for close to 2 hours.)

Late in the afternoon, we ventured back out into the fray, our dry clothes lasting all of about 2 minutes.  When I asked my friend what she and her husband would be doing if I were not visiting, she said that they would be at home.  I am still not entirely sure if her tone was wistful or celebratory.

The middle of the three days of Songkran, which happened to coincide with my birthday, I went with my friend to her parent’s home in a village about a half an hour south of Chiang Mai.  She currently works as financial manager for 2 hotels, one a small Thai-owned boutique hotel just inside the old city, and the other a big hotel owned and managed by a Singaporean company, just outside the old city and with a very nice view of the northwestern corner of the city and the mountains just beyond.  She has always worked in finance, but it has only been very recently that she herself has reached a level of financial security and affluence to engage in the kind of Songkran gift-giving that she has wanted to.  She explained that if one is in a position to do so, one gives gifts to one’s elders and sometimes teachers as a token of respect and thanks for their efforts in raising and teaching one.  On her gift-giving list were her parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and her 6^th grade teacher.

We had spent the day previous buying things, mostly everyday things such as shampoo, cooking oil, bottled water, and laundry detergent, in sizes such as an individual person would use.  In addition to these items, my friend also bought paasin, the traditional Thai wrap-around skirt for women, and white men’s undershirts.  (The women definitely got the better deal.)  We drove out to her parents’ house mid-morning and straightaway began cooking.  We made two traditional snacks of the northern region, one savory and the other sweet.  The former involved curried pork, the latter sticky rice, coconut milk, and bananas; both were wrapped in banana leaf packets and steamed.  I’m afraid I can’t describe the curried pork in any great detail, other than that it contained a whole lot of shallots, lemongrass, cilantro, and a paste made of beans, fermented fish, chilies, and spices.  The bananas and sticky rice, however, I have now made three times in three different regions, each one slightly different, but basically all involving sticky rice mixed with coconut milk and wrapped with slices of banana, usually in triangular-cylindrical packets.  Sometimes sugar, herbs, spices, beans, nuts, and/or fruit are added in various combinations.  Sometimes the packets are steamed singly, sometimes they are tied together in pairs with strips of bamboo, the art of twisting which such that it actually held together took some time.

The making of the filling, folding the packets, and steaming them took up the morning and mid-way through the afternoon.  The remainder of the afternoon was spent putting together the gift packets, which included the aforementioned items, along with paper cones with sprigs of what looked like miniature popcorn, small packets of betel root, also hand-wrapped, which I was not about to attempt, and tiny bags of perfumed water. 

Once the gifts were all ready, we made the rounds to my friends’ relatives.  At each stop, a similar ritual ensued: first the gifts would be given, sometimes placed in a bowl with giver and receiver both placing their hands on it during the exchange.  Then the receiver would offer a New Year’s prayer/blessing, sometimes in Bari, the older, traditional language of Buddhist rituals here, sometimes in Thai.  This blessing seemed to consist of a standard core of wishes, may you have long life free from suffering, good health, advancement in your career, etc., upon which the blesser is then free to expand and improvise.  (Only in one case did this not take place, when the wife of one of my friend’s uncles professed not to know how to make this kind of blessing.  Apparently, she was not old enough and had not participated often enough in this particular ritual to have learned it yet.)  Finally, the elder would tie a white string around younger visitors’ wrists (including me) as a material symbol of blessing.  In this connection, not all strings are created equal.  If the string is composed of 9 strands, then it only has to be looped around the wrist once, but if it only has 3 strands, then it must be looped thrice.  One of my friend’s great-aunts, who is in her late 80’s, specifically asked her daughter how many times to go around, and then immediately forgot or ignored the answer and only went around twice, but everyone politely let this slide.  It was New Year’s after all.

Being able to be part of this expression of gratitude and receive the blessings of people with more experience and wisdom than I (who didn’t know me from Adam) was a wonderful way to spend my birthday.  So I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone out there who has helped me to become the person I am; you know who you are.