2/13/11 Five Monks Arrived

After my body involuntarily sleeps for the 2.5 hour plane ride from Kolkata, I land in Bangkok at 5:30am. The last 24 hours have spanned 1 day but felt like 3 days with all the events from shadowing surgery, talking to kids from a rundown area, saying bye to friends, flying to Kolkata, seeing Mother Teresa’s house, and now landed in Bangkok. My uncle, that used to live in the U.S. a number of years ago, and his 9 year old son kindly picked me up at this ungodly early hour of the morning. The last time I saw my uncle, I was about 8 or 9 years old myself. I barely recognized him, 15 years will change you and I was surprised when he recognized me. On our short drive to my uncle’s house, I already see the obvious differences between India and Thailand. The airports in India, even in large cities like Kolkata, were pretty small and some had only hole-in-the-ground toilets. The Bangkok airport was super modern with a glass appearance and plenty of LCD monitors – much nicer and newer airport than JFK or LAX. The ides are nicely paved (definitely better than LA pothole-ridden highways) and most building structures were completed without signs of botched construction and years of overuse like in Guwahati. The people and scenery change too; monks in orange robes are everywhere as is the familiar tongue of Thai being spoken.

We pretty much head immediately to my grandma’s birthday celebration. Since plans were vague, I knew that we were going to Chiang Mai, a 1 hour plane ride away today but had no idea when. Turns out we will be at the party from early AM until 5pm to catch a flight at 6:30pm. In Buddhist tradition, monks in monk orange robes pay a visit to private events such a birthdays, engagements, and weddings to complete prayers/chantings, blessing all involved, and accepting food/gifts. Since my parents are quite devout Buddhists, going to temple and visiting monks was more of rarity growing up. They more instilled into my life, what I consider the important overarching beliefs: walking the figurative middle line in life, reincarnation, and soulmates.

Since Byram consisted of 99% Caucasians and Christian followers, I rarely ever discussed Buddhist traditions which were seemingly weird in comparison. It wasn’t until about last week that I realized this was a beautiful part of my family’s culture when Kelly, Minh, and I were invited to a Hindu birthday celebration with our translators that consisted of similar proceedings of a lively birthday party combined with a visiting monk or priest with food offerings and praying/chanting. Kelly kept expressing how cool it was and that she’s never witnessed anything like that. Then I mentioned how similar the Hindu birthday party was to Buddhists. Kelly finding this entire experience cool made me also realize the same (and the fact that I have awesome multi-cultural friends in my life now).

The food is fantastic at my grandma’s birthday party. About 40 guests show up and the event is catered. Spicy is certainly redefined in Thailand and I’m loving it. Besides my uncle that picked me up, nearly everyone speaks solely Thai with some knowledge of random English phrases. When it comes to languages, I understand much much better than I can speak. It’s the strangest thing being able to comprehend entire conversations but forgetting all the words the second my mouth opens and I’m left searching my left brain. This unfortunate fact of my brain holds true with Spanish, Chinese, and Chow-jo-nese (a Chinese dialect that my parents speak). Its great being surrounded by Thai speakers, I am picking up so much so quickly – and its only been a few hours.

Since I haven’t been back in 20 years, everyone is amused with my appearance. Lots have said that I look a lot like my mom. My entire family kept asking why I was so dark – clearly I lived in the U.S. where everyone was white yet I looked tan enough to be from the Phillipines or India. They were also curious about whether my fading henna tattoo was permanent or not. Its sort of funny how pale everyone is in Thailand – the opposite effect of Americans obsessed with maintaining a tan. In an ideal world, the grass would not be greener and people would embrace their natural pigmentation. Family, especially grandma, keep hounding me about why I let myself get so dark and how I used to have such fair skin (it’s true I do become very pale in the absence of sunlight). Its amusing though, grandma’s response to others asking the question is that I just came from India and I spend my summers teaching swim lessons outdoors (true about 2 years ago). I don’t know enough Thai to crack a wise joke about how I use umbrellas for rain and not to avert a tan or how I carelessly roamed around Africa without sunscreen and was about 10x’s darker than I am currently or that I enjoy laying out on beaches in LA to even out my tan. Note to self for next Thai trip: turn off melanin production, wear a cloth over my face at all times, and buy some of that Clinique skin bleaching cream sold at the airport so that I may look like a falang (white person).

Being at the party today was one of the primary reasons for my sojourn here. It was lovely being with family and meeting younger cousins for the first time and see other relatives that I have not seen for over 10 years. I always knew growing up that I had a larage family but it seemed more like imaginary people in a far far away land. Most importantly today besides being there as my grandma (that looks no more than 50 years old) turns 70, is seeing my grandpa, whom I call ahgong. My mother had been updating me on his failing health and initial development of Alzheimer’s. In recent months when she would call her father, he forgot who she was. One time, she mentioned that she is E-ling’s (my Chinese name meaning Jade) mother and he recalled me and subsequently his daughter. I had a close connection with my grandfather. He lived at our house a number of years while working in a restaurant with my dad. He was the only person that spoke Chinese to me so when he left about 8 years ago, I lost most of my language abilities. Grandpa loved photography but life never gave him the luxury to pursue it. Mom would later recall that during her childhood, her father was so devoted to his 7 kids and would only take excursions away from family to take photos and constantly had a camera on hand. Ahgong was also in Chinatown, NYC, possibly his favorite place in the U.S. on 9/11. After retiring from hard restaurant work for 30 years in the U.S. to send enough money home to support his large family, grandpa finally left NJ and headed for the Great Wall presumably to speak Chinese and take photos. After his trip or two to China, he has been spending his days at another uncle’s home. My eyes welt a little when I see him. He has aged a bit and he recognizes me although looked strangely at me first since I have grown a bit since the last time we saw each other. I get frustrated with myself since I forget how to say Chinese words like: restaurant, newspaper, language, house, school…but I know if it was said in conversation, I would instantly know it. This made it a bit challenging to even summarize that I lived in an apartment in Los Angeles now forget about that I’m studying public health and moved away from NJ or that dad now works in a nursing home cafeteria instead of El Coyote where they used to work together in the kitchen. We spend the next hour speaking in Chinese in a super basic conversation that goes something like…

Me: Grandpa I have pictures of stuff (unable to recall how to say countries or animals) on this (referring to my DSLR since I forget how to camera);
Ahgong: Great
Me: Look, stuff!
Me: I’m not in NJ anymore, I went to CA
Grandpa: Where do you live?
Me: <15 second pause as I search my left brain> apartment (except this is in English since I have not the slightest clue what the Chinese word for apartment is)

The convo does not progress any more intelligently than this. I started repeating lots of words over and over again and at some points combine a mix of Chinese-English-Thai. It’s a mess.

Seeing my grandfather again this trip and sadly possibly for the last time will remain a treasured memory but also a sad one. When I asked my grandpa in Chinese, “How are you?”, he reluctantly replied “As good as it gets. I’m sick now and not the same anymore” with sadness in his voice. He spoke about not being able to leave Thailand because he now depends on people to care for him. He was a man that typically traveled around solo to NYC, China, and Thailand never having to depend on anybody. Being able to see him again and share the love of photography and remembering little things like the noodle soup and Ovaltine he would eat and drink religiously every night, the silly toys he would bring my brother and I when we were young like a Christmas caroling caged bird that ran on triple A batteries or a Tweetie bird cassette tape player, or how slowly he would drive the tan minivan that my parents owned, and the way he would capture our childhood through his lens was simply wonderful.