By Apoorva Dixit:
Colorful and smiling life is what everybody craves for. That is why we want different colors in our life. Sticking to the same old schedule again and again is so monotonous and robotic leading our lives to a mere humdrum existence. For students, it may be a different day for they learn about varied subjects. But their life also consists of a very important factor called ‘bunk’ which makes their life repetitive. For working professionals, can you differentiate Tuesdays from Wednesdays without giving reference to your meetings or daily targets? It is the same day for everyone in the end.
This is not in the case of people of Thailand. They have colors assigned for every day. Everyday has its own colorful significance. The color of Monday is Yellow. If you are born on Monday, then Yellow is your lucky color. The present Thai King Rama IX was born on Monday and that is why his flag is yellow. The queen was born on Friday and so her auspicious color is Blue, and so is the color of her flag. Red is the color of Sunday, pink for Tuesday, green for Wednesday, orange for Thursday and violet for Saturday. In olden days, they used to wear clothes according to the colors.
Now we all know the statues of Buddha have different postures. Sleeping, sitting etc, and every posture represent a day and the color. For example if you are born on Tuesday, your Buddha idol will be a reclining Buddha and there are bright chances that you will become policeman, soldier, chemist, cook or hairdresser. Your basic nature would be brave, active, broad and serious.
Some of you may call it superstition, but I call it faith. It is not meaningless as in Indian culture too every day is assigned to a different God. For example, Saturday for Lord Hanuman. It is all about faith and if such faith is bringing colors to our life, then why not believe it? It is better to assign colors to days than to religions. Imagine a country like India, where people find religions in colors – wear the same color on different day. Won’t it be a colorful unity?
After visiting Thailand you will find that it is a place which gifts you joy, makes you comfortable, appeals to you, bewitches you and intoxicates you. This is not the characteristic of Thailand, but is the quality of Thai people who make it so interesting and inviting with a simple tool called ‘Smile’. Strangers take no time in breaking the ice and help you out of any situation.
English speaking Thai are considerably low in Thailand. Reason being, Thailand was the only country in South-East Asia that was never colonized. Why? Because they had maintained good relationship with each and every country. The King of Thailand took pains to visit countries to maintain friendly relationship with them. Smile worked for them again. These are simple principles of life which are rarely followed. There natural politeness clearly reflects in their language where politeness has nothing to do with age, position and power. It is about mutual respect and connectivity.
If the whole world learns this Thai language of smile, we won’t need bald eagles or dove to spread peace. Hope you don’t smile because you are photographed, but you are photographed because you smile. Most of the youth today only smile if they want to change their display picture on social networking sites – and not in tough situations. Smiling is a difficult thing, smiling Thai people does not mean they are happy, it is just that they face crisis in life with a smile. Just like Indian culture, Thai culture is also very rich, and has varied ethnic and religious traditions, and the colour and smile are a part of it.
Keep smiling! 🙂