Thailand is an extremely stratified culture, although a true Thai would never want it to be known--no need to admit, especially to someone from elsewhere in the world, that there are people who simply have less "face" than others. Still, when one of the upper rung of executives is in the lunch room, ambient chatter is nonexistent. For comparison, imagine X showing up at Niagara Falls and the roar silencing.
Likewise, chatter among the lunchroom ladies silences when someone of sufficient standing to eat in the private lunchroom walks in (this includes the Thai administration, executive assistants, senior Thai faculty, Chinese faculty, and farang faculty).
And the omnipresent scrape of whisk brooms gathering fallen leaves into burn piles ceases as the lunch trolleys wheel past enroute to the cafeteria or other student dining location.
As far as I can tell, the bottom rung of society keeps the streets swept using coarse wisk brooms and dustbins made from bamboo rods wired to rectangular metal jugs cut into scoops. Somewhere in the dark, at either end of the day, they are out, cleaning the (remarkably copious amounts of) refuse from the day before. It's hard to tell age or gender behind broad-brimmed hats of either canvas or straw, thick face coverings partway between veil and breathing mask, nondescriptly worn and grimy overalls or loose long-sleeved shirt with long pants, and plastic flipflops. Always the plastic flipflops on feet worn to the brink of callused, tanned, horny hooves. Sometimes the hands, nearly as weatherbeaten as the feet, have garish nails. Sometimes the eyes, bearing the cultural inheritance of the Land of Smiles, twinkle within smears of garish eyeliner.
These people are the invisibles. They operate around the clock in broad view, they gather and haul off mountains of detritus, and, like the ladies who clean the English Programme's coffee mugs, keep the coffee, creamer, sugar, and chocolate full, stock the water jugs and milk containers, sweep the floors and take out the trash, if they receive recognition or comment it is for their inefficiency or sticky fingers.
II: Unrecognizables
Soi dogs--street mongrels--are some of the ugliest and most decreped creatures in the world. They grow up exposed to the sun, rain, humidity, territorial duels, vehicular traffic, disease, malformation, malfunction, common ire, and uncommon interest imaginable. After once mistaking a long-eared pig with sparse patches of wiry hair sprouting from ash-blask skin for a good-looking soi dog, I haven't been able to shake the impression that many soi dogs would look better if they WERE pigs. And if I see a critter rooting through piles of roadside trash (frequently smoldering) I'm still more likely to give favorable recognition--and appreciation--to a pig.
Soi dogs seem to adopt places or people, and while there are nightly brawls and regularly shifting appearances at a given street cart, the same dogs come back to the same places night after night, day after day. We have two at my guesthouse, a pudgy bitch with short tan-gray hair and a scrappy little guy with black corkscrews. Mainly, the bitch flops in the coolest available spot and plays a rather rounded doormat with swollen nipples. The other one is scrappy, attacking shoelaces and bags of dinner toted unmindfully home. One of the residents keeps his topknot tufted into a bow. A few weeks ago, I heard him yelp and scream after getting hit by a car. He spent a couple days sleeping, favored his right rear for a while, and is now back to chasing vehicles and pedestrians. I have no doubt he, or the bitch, would go berserk if bathed or even constrained to an interior space. I also have no doubt that, were either cleaned up, it would make a great pet (in the familial, American sense).
But in all honesty, concern for vermin and disease scares me away from touching even the two that call my place home, the ones I see other people petting and scratching. In all honesty, if I had a good brush with one, I would go straight to my room to change pants, then straight to the washer, no passing go or collecting a handful of Baht. And these don't even exhibit more than mild mange, let alone bizarre growths.
III
Love: beauty I
I once stumbled into a lecture by Barry Lopez. In it, he described love and its demonstrative beauty: a mother changing a baby, a tortilla-maker flattening dough, someone in a roadside stall plying an inherited trade. This is love. This is beauty.
To act with such intention and passion that the act becomes unconscious--the woman in a headscarf flipping out roti dough, the woman with bruises hacking apart roast pig, the man coordinating whisk-broom, dustbin, and garbage canister into a smoothly rotating trio, the ancient violinist tuning up, the way the janitor sweeps through students and around teachers, this is beauty.
This culture, based on physical involvement and interaction, is rife with such beauty. An Isaan emigrant working mortar and pestle while turning grilled catfish. Painters touching up a curb or street lines, a samlor peddling slowly past while enroute to the zoo, the way grizzly old fingers debone chicken, the way a first-year teacher hikes her skirt before passing in front of the administration building: these are beauty. When a mindful act is carried out to its uttermost but with mindless disregard, this is love, and it is beautiful.
IV: The middle path
In this Buddhist culture, offerings of food and incense are made every morning. A plate of food, a bowl of food, a glass of juice, an open bottle of soda, or some combination thereof is set on the sidewalk with a stick of incense in it. Usually, by mid or late afternoon, passing chirpy birds have pecked at the offerings until the incense sticks toppled.
Note: soi dogs rarely get into these offerings. Nor do cats or beggars.
Usually, they wilt on styrofoam plates until the morning sweeping.
V
Love: beauty II
There is much to say for a culture whose rejects--street dogs and dwellers--eat so well they don't attack curbside offerings of fresh food. Indeed, the standard diet of handouts and cartside leftovers, most soi dogs have the luxury of leaving behind rice or vegetables or otherwise unappealing detritus. And there's no need to argue with birds. Easier to nap until the next turnover of food carts.
There is much to say for a culture whose curb-top food offerings of one day turn into birdfood before becoming refuse and getting swept up by the omnipresent invisibles along with discarded styrofoam bowls and plates and plastic silverware and cups and fallen leaves and academic waste and industrial waste and a reeking, gooey mass of their contents.
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