No ordinary day

Photo of a spirit house along the Chao Praya River. Accone/2015

I was planning an upbeat post about my spiritually uplifting day. There was to be a dash of self-deprecating humour — offering such sage advice as why pencil skirts aren’t a good match with having to kneel — coupled with appreciation for the multicultural experience. But then 7pm rolled around and what we thought was thunder may in fact have been the sound of a bomb exploding.

The Erawan Shrine is one of many here in Bangkok that I, like hundreds each day, have visited. More importantly, its central location means lots of people pass it on a daily basis.

Our family have walked by the Shrine many times, normally enjoying the panoramic view from the elevated walkway that joins Chit Lom and Siam stations on Bangkok Transit System’s elevated sky train.

I walked by there last week to collect my laptop from being repaired. My husband walked by the week before on his way to and from a job interview. Our whole family strolled past there on a recent weekend en route to comparison shop for a new television at one of the many nearby shopping centres. Us one of many ordinary people doing ordinary things.

The people visiting the shrine are a multitude of ordinary people too. One of the striking elements here in Thailand is the rich cultural diversity and wide cultural embrace. At any given time, only a proportion of people paying their respects at this Hindu shrine (and others for that matter) would actually be followers of the Hindu faith. Thai Bhuddists visit, not to mention tourists of varying faiths for whom the Erawan Shrine was an attractive and easily accessible cultural stop.

 

This terrorist attack against ordinary people like you and me struck me as particularly appalling juxtaposed against a day which began with a Brahmin ceremony, moved through a prayer chanting with nine Bhuddist monks and ended with a multicultural lunch that spanned pizza, fried chicken and Thai tapioca in coconut milk dessert. 

The people who participated in the event were ordinary too, and of varying faiths, nationalities and ethnicities, united by shared values, among them tolerance.

I have said silent prayers for those ordinary lives made tragically extraordinary because of the vicious way they were ended this evening. However, I am consciously choosing to remember this day as one marked by tolerance, and evidence of how well ordinary people can get along no matter how different they might otherwise be.