King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the Great, the Ninth Rama, (1927-2016), RIP.
Thailand has lost the oldest, longest-reigning, and probably most beloved king in its history. It's difficult to know where to begin in trying to explain the significance of his life and reign to those who don't know Thailand. Perhaps I should start with the pictures that you see below, which I keep on a high shelf in my current bedroom, as I have done since I purchased them in the King's Diamond Jubilee year (2006).
I was exploring the narrow back alleys of Thonburi near Memorial Bridge, across the river from Bangkok proper, when a display of these and similar portraits caught my eye in the window of a mom-and-pop camera shop. They commemorated the Diamond Jubilee celebrations which had just taken place, but for which I had not been able to make the trip from Seoul. The portraits cost next to nothing, of course, because they'd been reproduced in literally industrial quantities.
They reveal much. For one thing, they feature the royal personages whose images you most frequently find hung in Thai homes and businesses. In all of the 2 years that I lived in Bangkok, and in the course of more than 30 visits to Thailand since then, I have never seen an establishment that does not have a picture of the late King hung up somewhere. Sometimes the picture is small, sometimes its big, sometimes there are several, but there's always at least one. In many cases, his portrait is paired with one of the Queen, although less so in recent years. Quite often you also see a portrait of the King's second daughter, Princess Maha Chakra Sirindhorn, whom you can see leaning over the window sill next to the King in the picture at right. Apart from that of the revered King Chulalongkorn, the Fifth Rama, no other royal portraits are commonly displayed. In a land where the progress of Western-style electoral democracy has been to the rhythm of one step forward and two steps backward, the hanging of royal portraits is a form of voting -- or at least of popular endorsement. Unlike in North Korea, the hanging of the head of state's portrait, or those of his family members, is neither commanded nor legislated in Thailand, it's done voluntarily -- and the fact that portraits of certain people are NOT hung speaks volumes.
With profound sympathy, I offer my deepest condolences to all my Thai friends and to the people of Thailand at large.
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