11 October 2006 – Wednesday – 18:56 – Chaiyapum
Here we have a dial-up connection. Whenever I want to connect to Internet, the telephone dialing sound comes first. Then, that known buzzing sound follows with dings and dongs. After many years with ADSL, I noticed that I have forgotten these sounds. I remembered my first years with Internet. I was at university when I first had chance to use internet at my family home. We were trying many times to get a connection of ten minutes without interruption. To download a program was a nightmare because of frequent disconnection. To send an e-mail was more depending on God’s grace on you and the computer. We were happy with having Internet at home but the torture of wasting a lot of time in front of computer screen was inevitable. Later on, I had ADSL in Bangkok. No dialing, no buzzing, no disconnection… As soon as the computer is ready to work, the connection is installed. Although I do not have interruptions any more, I still waste a lot of time in front of computer screen due to the other kinds of obsessions. I visit news sites, read sports news, look for funny pictures or videos, download unnecessary programs and even chat with old friends. All these things made me away from writing and reading decent things. But here, I discovered the glory of my old days, of those dial-up days. Because connection is too slow here, I am easily discouraged from surfing. Only today, I read more than 100 pages fiction and almost 50 pages of biography. I had a run of 6 km and had a very nice siesta at the backyard. All these things are hardly to be done if I have an ADSL connection because screen of computer sucks me in and I forget all other necessary things in my life. I wish I could go on this way even when I return home. I have ADSL at home but I am planning to uninstall it. The Internet I can use in school would be enough to survive. I can send and receive e-mails at school. I can even update my blog. The only thing I need is a strong will to stay away from my obsession of being connected! The fear of being unconnected is another sign of strong attachment of modern people. We are attached to technology in a way that we can not live without it. Then it does not become technology because technology means the science of tool making (Techne: Tool in Greek, Logos: Word, wisdom, science) and tools are useful as long as we use them to make our lives easier. If we feel miserable after losing our tools, can they still be considered as a benefit for living?
Anyway, today was very quiet and slow. I spent all my day reading, writing, sleeping and eating. One story I heard from J amazed me in the morning. In the village, a girl and a boy fell in love and had sex. The girl’s family gets mad when they learn about it. They first wait for the boy’s family to come and ask to girl’s family for marriage. After a reasonable time passes and no sign of movement from boy’s family, girl’s family goes to boy’s family and ask them what is going on! Aren’t you gonna come and ask my daughter for marriage? The boy’s family says it is too early for us, we can come around next February. The girl’s family wants a guarantee for this. Then boy’s family pays 25,000 Baht for their word but girl’s family rejects the money since it is too low to book their daughter. J said she did not know what happened next because she had to leave the conversation at that moment. But the part I have listened was enough to understand the concept of marriage and honor in Isan community. If my daughter lost her virginity because of your son, then they have to marry. This is understandable in all kinds of traditional societies. I guess many Bangkok residents still think by the same way for their daughters. What amazes me is asking money for a guarantee. It is like buying a car and asking money for booking. If you want to book my daughter, then you have to pay me some money. Then, I will keep her for you. I can not say it is a good way to make the young people happy but certainly it is peaceful. It does not harm the youth. Quite the opposite, it tries to save their future. I heard much worse stories in my own country. Honor killings are still part of modern life in Turkey and many other Muslim countries in Middle East. Especially in SouthEast Anatolia region is quite famous with this kind of horrible murders. I read many stories about how the father chooses the youngest member of the family and that member kills the daughter just because she had a relationship with a boy before getting married. They choose the youngest one to commit the murder because they believe the younger one gets less punishment.
I started to read David Lodge’s novel today. This is fifth novel I am reading from Lodge. What I like in his novels is his funny style of ridiculing intellectual people. He has no limit in criticizing the society and its well-known figures like administrators, academics, writers, theologians etc. I at the same time read a biography of Kafka written by Ronald Hayman. When I get tired with Lodge’s funny style, I return to Kafka’s black-white world. When I feel almost drowned in Kafka’s pessimistic world, I return the colors of Lodge. They together make up my day easily… I will finish probably Lodge much earlier than Kafka but no problem. I have one more novel from Lodge, waiting for me after Paradise News.
Right now, some guests are drinking beer and whisky at the backyard. J invited me but I refused to join. First because I don’t drink whisky and secondly I am writing. It is very tempting to join for a bottle of beer but I should not stop writing now. If I stop, I can not start again this evening. This is my weak point and I am trying to be stronger… Another thing, it might be contradictory for a man who ran 6 km to stay healthy in the afternoon and drink alcohol to destroy his day achievement.
Well, J came again and said they are insisting for me to join them. I guess, it would be better to join them as a foreigner guest –or actually husband of the owner of the house-. I will continue writing as soon as I feel ok after the consumption of a few bottles of beer. Let’s see…
21:22 – Just after a bottle of beer
It is interesting! There is grandmother suffering from liver cancer in living room. Everybody knows she already passed the no-return point. Sooner or later, she will die… May be this month, may be next month. There are guests coming to visit her, holding her hand to tell her a few nice words. Her life long friends, neighbors and people from other villages come to see her before she departs from this earth for the next journey. There are daughters of grandmother waiting in queue to be the next one to take care of her. And there are sons and son-in-laws drinking at the backyard, laughing loudly and speaking funny things. It looks like contradictory for me but this might be a cultural bias. In these people’s belief, death is not something that you have to mourn for! I did not see people crying after the death of an old person. But I remember very well how my aunt got crazy when her mother dies after a second stroke. I remember my father’s silence for a few days after my grandmother’s death. It is very different here. People react more naturally toward the death in these small villages. It might be because of their religion or it might be because of other sociological reasons. Buddha was definitely against the mourning after death because it is irrational. However, how can a human being stand to lose a loved one easily? It must be difficult. Right now, grandmother is sleeping. In the same room, there are kids and some elderly people watching TV. In the same room, there are two more elderly women sleeping although they are not sick. They came to visit grandmother but they fell in sleep. The women at the backyard are washing the dishes of dinner.
Yesterday, I was sitting beside the grandmother. I asked her a few things about her health but could not get a clear answer. Then, the old lady who was holding grandmother’s feet turned to me and held my hand. She was at the same age with grandmother and they were friends for the last 70 years. She was holding my hand and looking into my eyes deeply. I expected her to say something in Thai but her daughter told me that she can not speak anymore. She lost her capability of speech a few years ago due to the Alzheimer disease. I tried to look her eyes and the lines on her face. She was an 80+ woman with thousands of stories to tell but she lost her voice before she dies. I tried to understand what she wants to say by looking into her hopeful face! It was an envious and instructive look! It was saying that “know yourself when you are young” , it was saying that “I would give everything to be same as you again”, it was saying that “ I am old and my friend is dying beside me, look and learn” , it was saying that “life is a gift, do not waste it’… She held my hand for almost 3 minutes without changing the expression on her face. It was like we were both frozen n time and waiting for a magical word to break the circle. Her deep gray eyes, the lines in her face, thousands of wrinkles on all her body, the sad expression in her looking soon made me away from the place I was present. I remembered my own grandmother and somehow I remembered Ursula, the main female character in the novel “One hundred years of Solitude” . Surprisingly, there is one Ursula in Lodge’s novel as well. She is also old and she is dying of cancer too.
After she left my hand free, I felt the anxiety of losing a life-long friend. I have never lost a closed friend. Nobody I know died of accident or lost life with a sudden death. I only saw deaths of old people in my family. This is why I could not really solve the puzzle of her looking. She was losing her friend of last 70 years. They went to school together, they married around the same time, had children and grand children… A whole life passed together. Then, suddenly the friend who was always “out-there” has gone or basically declared the “defeat”. This pain seems unbearable even for a young mind. Does she get used to it when she sees more and more people around her disappearing? Can we get used to the idea of death?
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