Festivity and the Buddha

7:00 PM, Songkla

It is now dusk. The Boatman and I have arrived at a village where there is supposed to be a festival tonight. It is a festival in which a large statue of the Buddha – as high as the monolith from 2001 Space Odyssey – is to be pulled by hand from the city center back to the temple. In the past, it had some difficulty passing through the overhead electric cables that were suspended on street poles. Last year, hundreds of unruly teenagers joined the procession; pulling the monolith all the way from the central district to their village temple.

“They were hoping to find love while paying tributes to the good Buddha,” says the Boatman. This year, the Boatman’s younger brother will also be joining the procession.

We take a shortcut across the temple ground so that we could bypass a large crowd that is waiting to see the parade. The area is quite dark; we tip-toe across the volleyball court and as we walk pass the corner temple, we see two monks preparing something ominous. As we move closer, the yellow light from a street lamp – reflected from the plaster walls of the temple - reveals the faces of the monks. One face is wrinkled from age; it wears a caustic-mocking smile as shown in some rare photographs of Nietzsche. Another face is that of a youth; it tries to imitate the wrinkles and skepticism of the former, but its youthfulness betrays it. The two monks are obviously in the process of making firecrackers – a practice not deemed so holy by the Scriptures. Loose piles of black powder - charcoal, sulfur and potassium nitrate – can be seen next to the monks. They are rolling them into paper tubes so that they could be ignited as fireworks when needed. This is the first time that I have seen how a firecracker is made. We learn that this is a special firecracker; it could generate a much louder noise than the usual ones – like an explosion of a small bomb.

“I know what you’re thinking young man. A monk shouldn’t allow himself to be engaged in this kind of activity shouldn’t he?” says the older monk with a thin smile that does not seem to ever leave his face.

“Man has created science so that he could hunt more effectively. He makes weapons; he kills. Then he creates religion to condemn the killings,” says the monk as he continues wrapping the firecrackers.

We nodded silently in deference to the monks and walk towards a more illuminated area; there is a night bazaar sprawling around the main temple. They are selling food; barbecue chickens with garlic, various kinds of noodle dishes, and sweets. A large crowd of people – mostly older folks and kids – gather around the sellers. They seem to know one another quite well.

“Hey! I didn’t know you guys were coming,” says Taew in a surprise look as if she just saw ghosts emerging from the shadows of the temples. She is actually selling spicy noodle soup in one of the stalls next to the temple’s entry.

“I've heard that Fa (Taew’s young nephew) will be helping you out tonight? My younger brother is still hiding away from her for no reason,” says the Boatman as he laughs.

“No, she is out there with the boys….in the procession,” says Taew.

We walk over beyond Taew’s noodle stall at the entrance of the temple to take a better glimpse of the procession on the main street. Loud shouts and screams of excitement can be heard from afar; the procession is about 200 meters away from the temple ground. But it seems to take forever to move the statue an inch forward.

“That’s because there is a competition going on. There are two teams of youngsters pulling on a rope that connects to the Buddha statue. One team tries to pull it forward, while another tries to pull it back! It’s really a game….you know,” says the Boatman as he sense that I am being a bit impatient.

The two teams of youngsters also have their own cheerleaders; they are mostly teenage girls hanging out on the side of the street. Some gives out a loud cheers; some splashes water on the laboring boys. At least 10 buckets of water are being emptied for every 2 inches of distant covered by the Buddha statue. The youngsters are not in a hurry; so does the Buddha. The more popular the boy, the more water is poured on him; the same is also true for a girl. We notice that some youngsters are not aiming the buckets very well; the water from those buckets keep landing on our now drenched clothes. We take cover under a makeshift bamboo pavilion. The bamboo members are roped together around their connections; making a fairly sturdy but very light-weighted construction. Its tin roof is brittle with rust.

We can now see the enormous silhouette of the Buddha statue slowly emerges from the dark foggy night – like a towering Spanish warship arriving at the New World’s harbor. The yellow light from a street lamp shines on the prophet’s face; it reveals a type of smile that usually bodes laughter. It is a smile that celebrates the brutal and honest festivity of life.

The youngsters in the procession start to surround us as the monolith inches closer to the temple. It seems that the competition - tug of war - between two factions of rope pullers is now over. The team that was pulling the Buddha towards the temple - for some reasons - always wins. As we are resting under the bamboo pavilion; passively enjoying the festivity like a pair of potato couches, the Boatman’s brother arrives. He is dripping with water; his hair is wet and his shoe is squirting water as he walks. He sits next to us to catch a breath. A tall young woman in her 20s follows him. She is clad in a drenched t-shirt and a pair of jeans, cut off just below her crotch; her wet voluptuous figure is being displayed in an honest manner.

“Getting tired, old man?” she asks the Boatman’s brother in a deep throaty voice that could have easily seduced the mafia boys from the eastern villages.

“So you were with the boys again eh?” says the brother. There is a wild anger beneath his dark handsome exterior.

“You’ve joined the eastern boys against me!”

“No, your pull on the rope is simply not strong enough, old man. I only join the winning side,” says the young woman as she leaves open her full broad lips; challenging him.

“Come on…. Brother” says the Boatman. “In the end, you have to let it (the Buddha statue) go ….you can’t just keep pulling it back; otherwise the monks will be mad!”

“Last year, during the festival, when we were all building Tou’s house, you were flirting all over the eastern boys,” the young man exposes her.

“We were mixing cement so that you lazy northern boys could pour them while dancing and singing those stupid songs,” she derides him.

The brother explodes in a fit of anger; drags the girl into a more private area of the temple where they continue their arguments. Their amorous fighting is being obscured by the thick meditative walls of the temple; completely washed away into a pool of laughter and giggles that permeates the general festive atmosphere.

“That girl is Taew’s newphew,” says the Boatman. He says that last year the community, in its usual tradition, decided to help Tou build his new house to be used after his wedding. Fa, in her mischievous ways, flirted with the eastern boys during the entire construction. That got his brother very angry then. He always gets into trouble during these festivals. He likes to fight other boys from the neighboring villages.

“Couldn’t the villagers hire a contractor to build their houses? Wouldn’t that be less of a trouble?” I ask.

“I don’t think so. People are used to this tradition. After all, it is an excuse for them to get together and do something,” observes the Boatman.

“This act of building a house together, is it part of a religious festival?” I ask.

“Hell no! It’s totally secular; we drank, worked, gossiped, and let our lust ran wild!”

“Yeah, and get yourself in trouble like yo’ brother!
But how often do you see these kinds of festival anyway?”

“Well…it doesn’t happen so often now….maybe once or twice a year at most” the Boatman explains as he takes an excursion into the realm of silence.

It seems that state laws and regulations have taken their leaves of absence during these festivals. People do things freely without regards to the laws; yet they produced beautiful things; they pulled amazingly heavy statues; they built their neighbors’ houses – all for free. Even the most coercive Marxist-Leninist regimes cannot force people to build their neighbor’s house. But it happens many times; again and again during the improvised chaos of festivals. Perhaps festivals are founded on the basis of social consensus; perhaps it is founded on what people wanted to see happened – a sort of transient utopia. Nobody has ever written anything down as to how they will achieve those festive goals. There is no governing constitution telling how the festival should be run; there is no election as to who will do what during the festival. The masons, the plumbers, the lawyers, the mayors, and even the monks are deemed equal under the banner of festivals. But as the flame and fluidity of festival dies down, people start to re-crystallize into their rigid social roles.

We can now hear a sudden flash of explosion; the impact has shaken the ground and the bamboo pavilion where we are sitting. The conversation around the shack ends abruptly. The youngsters arriving at the temple gate scream and run towards our bamboo shack. They are so delirious that they run right into it; uprooting one of its foundation so that the Boatman is now holding the tin roof with his bare hands. The shack – due to its light weight – tips over to one side.

We can hear more deafening explosions. It does not help to know that several bombs had recently exploded in the province of Songkla in the past few months. They were planted in popular teahouses by the separatists and were triggered by the use of cellular phones. The boys are running wild in all direction now. The girls are surprisingly calm compare to the boys; they simply cover their ears after which they continue pulling the Buddha statue through the temple ground like nothing has ever happened. When my senses return, it finally dawns on me as to who the culprits are. I suddenly recall the two monks whom we have stumbled upon during our shortcut across the volleyball court; between the shadows of the temples. I remember the old monk and his lonely face and his inapt smile that never seems to go away. He celebrates life as is; even its ugliness; he makes explosives and he celebrates them.

The fireworks light up the sky; we can now see the temple ground clearly. Young men pound their battle drums in strong rhythmic thrusts; blending them with the sound of explosion, screams, and cheers. This is the collective climax - a fleeting one as always - that seems to keep human societies in good psychological health. The dark Buddha statue could now be seen towering above the sprawling night bazaar; surrounded by hundreds of people: teenagers, grandmas, kids, monks, lovers, and stray dogs. They danced; they celebrate; they collaborate; forgetting who they are for the moment.