LOOKING AHEAD, POST-CEREMONY
Historic moments, which we will never see again.
The yarn of history has spun its fine threads. History is the majestic pageantry that took place on Thursday, the likes of which we’ll never see again. It is the centuries-old chariots dripping with gold, the festooned processions and severe steps of solemn marchers, the sorrowful magnificence of the royal crematorium. History is the elegiac trumpet salute to the beloved King, the fabulous cosmology of heaven recreated on Earth, the stunning synchronicity of the masked dance performers, and finally, history is the invisible fire and the grey smoke in the night sky, signalling that everything must return to ashes.
History is when, strangely, time seemed to have stopped. Or at least the time in Thailand, when the country wept or was transfixed by the gravity of the event. Regardless of a person’s standpoint on the ideological spectrum, the royal cremation for the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej — besides the day of his passing on Oct 13 last year — was undoubtedly a historic moment whose visual, cultural and historical magnitudes will forever occupy the collective memory of Thailand.
The year of tears and grief has climaxed on a long, humid, rainy, and eventually serene night of the regal, unforgettable cremation.
The moment has passed, and now the clock has started ticking again. It has to, because history only moves in one direction: forward. History is here, now, and also tomorrow. After the 70 years of King Rama IX, we have to move on.
Besides the gun salute and the outpouring of emotion, besides the ritualistic pomp and funereal splendour, what struck me most dramatically was something else, something fundamental: it’s the simple fact that such a display of ancient tradition was staged in the metropolis of Bangkok in the 21st century, a confirmation that modern Thailand is indeed a Kingdom steeped in pre-modern history — one of the coolest cities on Earth is also a place defined by the symbolism of Hindu mythology, Brahmin rites, Buddhist lore, in the manifestation of gold-gilded Mount Meru and the creatures from a fantastic forest, all of this with a massive militaristic choreography thrown into the mix.
It’s a paradox — a rich, conscious and eccentric paradox whose significance and ramification will continue to give us joy and doubt, and to undergird the superstructure of society, especially when history has already turned its pages. Can we imagine any other modern country with a long history and tradition — say Japan, China, or even India, whose millenniaold scriptures gave us the stern-faced statues of the gods adorning the crematorium — stage something in a similar scale? Maybe not, and not because they couldn’t. It’s because Thailand in 2017, in our blissful paradox, is not a secular state, we never were, but a hybrid structure of religious, monarchical and military influences, a convergence whose implications have been evident throughout history.
In many ways, the glorious goodbye to the King on Thursday was a representation of what Thailand is going through: An attempt to reconcile our nostalgia for the past with the ambition for the future, to strike a balance between pride of tradition with the dream of 4.0 reboot, to go forward without leaving history behind. True, every country faces that challenge, every country strives to achieve progress without selling their souls. But the hypnotic grandeur of Thursday’s ceremony, the mixed emotion of awe, dizziness and melancholy, signifies that we among others are trying so hard to cling on to reassurances, to the symbolism that has validated us as a nation. It’s necessary for a nation of 67 million. It’s also necessary to be aware that it was a souvenir of the past.
Now that we’ve given the king a splendid farewell, we gather ourselves up and peer through the smoke. To honour the king — an exceptional, forward-thinking monarch from a Third World country who in the mid-20th century defied the stereotypical image of fairy-tale, crowntopped ruler living in a glittering castle — we have to look forward. We have to realise that history is today as well as tomorrow. To feel the pride in ancient tradition but not to treat them as a straitjacket that inhibits movement, either social, spiritual or political. To believe that we can revere a respected institution with regards to universal human rights. To sing the dirge for a monarch with our hearts and eyes fixed firmly on the democratic future. To love but not to be blinded by love. Like everything else here, it’s going to be difficult. It’s going to be a paradox. But it’s inevitable, and the yarn of history, after having spun its finest thread this week, will keep spinning, in peace or in trouble, in joy or in doubt, in tears and ashes, until eternity.