Silpa: the Art of Love

Chapter 13
Old City Ayuttaya

The morning pours through the window making the ever-present teeming
flecks of dust particles hanging suspended in the air visible, resting in the
empty space like zooplankton floating in the sea. For fun I blow a breath,
sending a swirling mushroom rising above me into a plume, dispersing the
corpuscular mass of infinitesimal organisms in all directions, twinkling as
constellations in an infinite universe. The day outside is bright and blue,
crisp and clear as a ringing bell. It must have rained sometime late last
night because shining puddles are gathered on rooftops and roads.
Everything looks clean and fresh, as though the city just stepped out of
the shower. I too feel refreshed by the good night’s sleep, looking forward
to seeing Silpa.

This trip will probably be my one chance to visit the ‘real’ Thailand this
time. That is to say large cosmopolitan cities like Bangkok tend to
represent less of the culture and traditions of the country they’re within
and are generally inclined to have more in common with the other modern
metropolises of the world. Most importantly, I get to spend the whole
stunning day with Silpa, maybe the entire weekend.

At ten I go down to the lobby, finding Silpa seated on a couch waiting.
We wai and go out to the Saab. It must have had a wash with last night’s
rain as the patina of its faded paintwork is coated with a translucent film
of water catching just enough sunlight to reflect it back at me, giving the
car a gilded lustre. We hop inside, and the reliable engine kicks over with
the first turn of the key. The Saab pulls onto the main road without
having to wait, with traffic lighter than at any other time I’d seen it, and
traverse the single span concrete bridge across the Chao Phraya I’d seen
the other night with Silpa. I try to spot the restaurant to my left on the
bank behind me, but can’t in the disordered pattern of roofs jumbled along
the riverside.

For the first time, I get to appreciate the river’s length and breadth as it
bends away in both directions for as far as the eye can see. Having
crossed the river, we negotiate a series of ring roads and raised highways
going off in every direction, making up the skeleton of the city. Following
one such asphalt bone we crossover a series of canals with overhanging
houses of tin and wood. It occurs to me that if the roads are this city’s
skeleton, then the river and canals are the veins and arteries giving it life.
Perhaps, as Silpa had said at dinner, water is life, not just a metaphor.

Heading further from the centre, more and more of what the entire city’s
edifice rests upon is left exposed. The foundation of the city is not a
carapace of bedrock, rather, the remnant tissue of the uncovered earth is
swamp and marshland, porous and sodden with stagnant pools, and I
make the fair assumption that beneath the untold tonnes of poured
cement constituting the city is nothing but mud.

“What’s Bangkok built on?” I ask.

“Clay,” replies Silpa, “a lot of clay. Enough clay to supply all the potters
on the planet for eternity, and enough to keep constructing this city in
cheap bricks to be coated in concrete forever. That, cheap labour, and
no natural geographical obstacles, means Bangkok can keep expanding
until it consumes the whole of Thailand.”

“But it’s got to be less than ideal to build a city on such a soft
substance?”

“Sure, Anna, if there’s an earthquake, the clay will liquefy and the
buildings will collapse, but that would be fate.”

“It wouldn’t be fate, it would be an earthquake destroying a city stupidly
built on clay: cause and effect.”

“Do you think so, Anna? Most foreigners don’t believe in anything, but in
Thailand we believe in nearly everything.”

“Is that because you’re Buddhists?”

“Partly.”

“You’re religious aren’t you, Silpa.”

“Yes, like most Thais I’m Buddhist; and like most I’m a novice taking my
first steps along Buddha’s Path to enlightenment.”

“I think you’re much more than a novice.”

He shakes his head humbly. Uncomfortable talking about himself in such
terms, he changes subjects back to what we were saying before.
“Actually, the city is slowly sinking under its own weight. Much more likely
than an earthquake is one day a huge flood will come and wash it all away
– and that would be fate – but the Thai people would build it again. Only
then they would be building the new Bangkok on a solid foundation: the
grave of the old one.”

“That’s a rational cause and effect argument I can deal with,” I reply in
the same light-hearted vein. “Now I think is a good opportunity for you to
tell me something about yourself you think I won’t believe. I’m sure
Buddhism is a fertile ground of scepticism for a cynic such as myself.”

This remark elicits a loud laugh, and it makes me feel happy to hear him
laugh so spontaneously. “Okay, but not now. Maybe tonight,” he manages
to say.

When things are calm I ask, “What will we be doing in Ayuttaya?”

“I thought I might take you to meet my family.”

“Your family?”

“My parents might be gone and I don’t have any brothers or sisters, but I
have many cousins, aunts and uncles. My family is extensive, and some
live in the same house I was born in. Before we go there, I’ll take you
around town to see Ayuttaya.”

“I can’t wait.”

We reach the point where grey gives way to green, and I have to assume
we’re no longer in Bangkok. The landscape is a mix of irrigated rice
paddies; banana trees and other cultivated crops; palm trees and fallow
swampland where the backward curving horns of grazing water buffalo
point to the sun; and cement suburban islands floating in the sea of
greenery – isolated vanguards pointing to the future as Bangkok
consumes the fertile alluvial floodplains surrounding it.

From leaving the hotel it only takes an hour or so before arriving at the
outskirts of Ayuttaya. The first indication of our approach comes in the
form of the increasing concentration of structures, though we’d never
been out of the web of humanity’s handiwork the whole way.

We cross another river, this one with red tinted water and clogged by
rafts of hyacinth. “What river’s this?” I ask.

“Still the Chao Phraya, it runs for hundreds of kilometres north.”

“If it’s the same river, then why is it red?”

“It’s been raining a lot up north, that colouring is mud washed downriver,
it will reach Bangkok before our return. It will probably flood more than
usual this season. Can you imagine, when I was young the Chao Phraya
was clean enough to eat the fish and drink the water; now it’s full of
trash and toxins. I used to go fishing with my father when I was little,
it’s my only memory of him, and we’d eat the fish and sell what we had
left over. You can’t do that any more.”

“You said before that the Chao Phraya is Thailand and the water in it is
the Thai people. If it’s polluted, what does that say about the country
and its people?”

Silpa nods thoughtfully.

“I’ve asked that question many times myself. The Chao Phraya is polluted
by modernity. Our traditional lifestyle Chao Phraya sustained for centuries
has been replaced, so the people think they no longer need it. Chao
Phraya is a tidal river and the oceans of the world also flow into Thailand,
bringing everything the modern world has to offer. And when the tide
turns they think that all their modern garbage like plastic, foam, oil,
pesticides and anything else they don’t want any longer – like their
past – can be discarded into the river and will flush away. Only, like their
changed life, it’s here to stay.”

“At dinner I remember you mentioned the same analogy of the river
flowing into the ocean, only then you mentioned it as a universal bond,
linking the people of the world together as one.”

“That’s right, and it does. Only for every positive there’s a negative, and
the downside of our exposure to the world is the dilution of our culture
and heritage into a tourist spectacle. Many Thais often complain about
this, but it’s us who want the modern life. It’s us who are driving the cars
that are polluting our bodies: no foreigner is forcing us to do it. I’m not
complaining, I’m just saying anybody pays a price in any exchange. Only
sometimes that price can be higher than we expected.”

With this last comment he glances at me, revealing the pain in his eyes. I
can guess as to what he must be referring, but while I’m thinking how to
broach such a difficult topic, he goes on. “The cost of being modern for
Thailand and for Thais is the degradation of our cultural heritage, which
we see reflected in the destruction of our natural heritage. But we still
love Thailand, we still love our culture, and we still love our river no
matter how polluted we make it.”

“You’re concerned with environmental issues in your work aren’t you,
Silpa?”

“Yes, from a Buddhist perspective.”

Through the window I watch as we pass through Ayuttaya. The town
itself resembles an outer suburb we passed through in Bangkok on the
way. Whitewashed government buildings are interspersed between rows
of terraces and faded wooden houses leaning precariously against each
other to keep from crumbling. Then, unexpectedly, we’re driving beside a
wide-open park with well-kept lawns, scattered temples, and lines of
elephants taking tourists sightseeing.

“Here we are,” says Silpa, parking the Saab. We follow a long path leading
to a large temple, take off our shoes and go inside where there’s an
enormous Buddha. Silpa goes to his knees and prays, and I kneel beside
him. We stay for about ten minutes, the whole of which Silpa spends in a
sort of torpor or semi-conscious state. Of course I know Buddhists are big
on clearing the mind and mediating, and assume that’s what he’s doing, though for myself I find such inner-reflection rather tedious and can’t get
past the thousands of thoughts that preoccupy my mind at any particular
moment.

After leaving the temple we wander around several ruins of buildings,
which Silpa tells me are the burial places of many of Thailand’s early kings.
Smaller dismembered and weatherworn stone Buddha statues are spread
around, though the damage done by time has added character to the
repetitive image, giving each individual injuries and markings of black and
green lichen that now differentiates them from each other.

“So these statues were damaged by the Burmese a couple of hundred
years back?” I ask.

“That’s right, as with the buildings. They took the gold and smashed and
burned everything else.”

I ask a passing tourist to take a picture of Silpa and I by an armless
Buddha, to which they readily consent, and I take a few portraits of Silpa
standing before statues and ruins.

“Is there much else to see, Silpa?”

“There’s much more.”

“I’m not much of a tourist I’m afraid. Is it just more of the same?”

“From your perspective I think probably so.”

“I’m much more interested in a personal tour of your life, so why not take
me to your home where you were born. Meeting your family would be an
interesting experience for me.”

“This is a personal tour of my life. When I was growing up I helped to
restore many of these buildings and Buddha statues. Now I try to restore
or provide mental cures for people through modern methods in my art.
Let’s go home and meet my family.”