How does one distinguish oneself in Thai society? Nat thinks the way to do it is to be just like everyone else… but different.
I am not one to push others around, but sometimes life just calls for it. Unfortunately, living in Thailand often screams for giving people a good, hard shove. This urge tends to overcome me most often at the top of escalators where people simply love to stop for a good look around. The last time it happened was at the Emporium movie theatre where this huge woman who filled up the entire width of the staircase was ahead of me.
When she got to the top, the old cow stopped dead in her tracks just in time for the entire queue of people behind her on the escalator to bump, one after the other, into the voluminous mass of her backside. This woman was not particularly old, but she must have considered herself important because she turned around and gave a nasty look to the common hordes behind her who were getting backed up like a human multiple car wreck.
Since a physical shove was not enough to dislodge this woman from her place at the top of the escalator, a place she obviously considered rightfully hers to the detriment of the pile of people getting squished behind, I asked her, in a loud voice, ‘Excuse me, if you don’t know where you are going, could you please move out of the way so that others don’t get crushed?’
Of course, my cousin Vana was embarrassed. She always is in such circumstances when she feels I have been overly assertive. ‘Don’t be rude to the lady just because she’s fat,’ Vana said.
But Vana was wrong yet again. I was not being rude because the woman was fat. I was being rude because she was stupid. I was annoyed because the old cow didn’t know that, if you have no idea where to go once you get to the top of an escalator, you move your behind out of everyone’s way.
Another group of people I would like to shove are the ones who aimlessly drive around carparks at extremely low speeds, creating an indoor traffic jam behind them. Excuse me? If there are no gaps, that means there are no empty parking spaces. Go a little faster and you might find a place to park so the people backed up behind you don’t feel like crashing into the back of your car out of sheer frustration. But hold on, I also don’t mean that you should go so fast that you have to jam on your brakes when you finally find somewhere to park.
Then there are people who get into the lift and stand in front of the buttons, blocking access for anyone else. Instead of pressing one of the buttons, however, they just stare as if they’ve never been inside an elevator before. Hello? Lobby. Press the button for the lobby if you don’t know where you’re going. You can ask someone there, but whatever you do, don’t just stand there exposing yourself for the idiot you are. Get the hell out of my way so that I can press a button and go where I need to go.
Someone please tell me, what are these people doing?
Vana got exasperated. ‘They are intimidated. Can’t you tell? They don’t know where they’re going and a big parking garage or an expensive hotel can be daunting if you’ve never been in a place like that before. Give these people a break. Not everyone,’ and here was one of those rare times Vana became sarcastic, ‘is as illustrious as you.’
Now I need some support here. Can anyone out there oblige? Is it too much to wish for people to move themselves purposefully or else to ask for directions if they don’t know where to go?
I think what’s hard is the asking part. If people don’t know, they feel embarrassed and are afraid to ask. This just goes to show you that the Thai problem of intimidation has nothing to do with class. If class were an issue then the woman at the top of the escalator wouldn’t have been so huffy about being told to move her butt out of everyone’s way. No, the problem is rather a fear of being conspicuous. Now that conclusion might come as a surprise to many who have taken a good look at some of Bangkok’s richest citizens but hear me out.
We as a culture are inclined to consensus. That means it is better to fit in than it is to stand out. When in doubt, do what your friends do. Understand that when some Thai men and women parade around cocktail parties like caricatures of bad taste, they aren’t doing it to stand out as much as they are doing it to conform. If your friends all have big hair and huge diamonds, you must too. The important thing is to do what everyone else is doing so there can be no confusion about proper behaviour. In fact, one can excel in one’s conformity. Can anyone argue that it’s perfectly desirable to have the biggest, most vulgar jewellery around but only if everyone else is wearing it?
In the cases of minor distinction, such as having the biggest hair or the ugliest jewellery, one is considered audacious and everyone loves that. We Thais have a word for it: keng. If you are good at anything, you are keng, but in order to be keng you must excel. Since no one likes to be too different, one must always excel at what everyone else does well. The result of such priorities is that we are a society wavering between intimidation and audacity. We are afraid to do anything without the company of our friends, but once our friends decide to do something, we all suddenly have the confidence to compete over who can do it the most obnoxiously.
So I suppose I should accept the fact that a good hard shove will never be enough to dislodge anyone from that rarefied place at the top of an escalator. Without the company of others, these people will always be immobilised by intimidation. They are waiting for friends to show the way.