Sample from 'Family Thais'
Ben Ja Ped and Lap Koh Khen
FROM THE TEACHING OF BUDDAH.
“Of all the worldly passions, lust is the most intense. Lust seems to provide the soil in which other passions flourish. Lust is like a demon that eats up all the good deeds of the world. Lust is a viper hiding in a flower garden; it poisons those who come in search only of beauty. Lust is a vine that climbs a tree and spreads over the branches until the tree is strangled. Lust insinuates its tentacles into human emotions and sucks away the good sense of the mind until the mind withers. Lust is a bait cast by the evil demon that foolish people snap at and are dragged down by into the depths of the evil world.”
4th July 2011
Shock
I wondered what I could have done for fate to hit me so hard. Though some might answer, plenty. That I’d been getting away with far too much for far too long.
First there was the terrible shock. Then the awful, gut wrenching, never-ending anxiety of the weeks and months that followed. It wasn’t just a roller coaster of emotion. It was more like a whole theme park. And one open 24/7.
Like most farangs I had not heard of the Thai concept of Ben Ja Ped.
Nor of Lap Koh Khen.
Both concern fate. Ben Ja Ped is where a combination of youthful high spirits and inexperience lead to dangerous times in a person’s life at the age of 14 or 15, and then again at around 25 and then finally at around the age of 50.
If you can cross those times of your life without incident, you become new, reborn. But if you are careless and something bad happens to you, then you have to be very careful indeed to prevent it from happening to you again at the next age.
Lap Koh Khen is where one person in a family circle has a narrow escape, but instead the consequence is transferred to the family member closest to them.
And that is exactly what happened on 28th June 2554 in the Buddhist calendar (or 2011 in the Western calendar).
My pregnant girlfriend Nok had already suffered her first Ben Ja Ped at age 14 when she was involved in a motorcycle crash that left two of her friends dead and her with a right leg so comprehensively shattered it had to be rebuilt from the hip to the ankle.
She missed a year of school and still bears a thin scar 40 centimetres long. So she should have been more aware and more careful as she approached her 25th birthday.
Three weeks before that birthday, I was late for a plane and was driving a Jaguar XJR on a two-lane unrestricted German autobahn at 265kmh (about 160mph).
Then, without looking in his mirrors, an HGV driver in front started overtaking another HGV.
I had nanoseconds to think, “headlights on so can’t flash, far too fast to brake, hand on horn and hope that the speed difference of at least 100mph will punch us through the closing gap.”
It did, centimetres to spare, without even raising my pulse. Unlike what was about to unfold, this was something I could control.
After the rush to the airport, once through check-in, emigration and security there was an eerie calm at the gate. Still another 15 minutes to wait. So I took the opportunity to phone Nok. I phoned Nok every day. It was something we both needed.
I woke her up. She was drowsy. Then, while I was trying to convey my autobahn story through the language barrier, Nok abruptly told me to call back later and cut off her phone.
That was the moment Nok’s Ben Ja Ped struck for the second time in her life and took the Lap Koh Khen from me. Except when a bomb like that goes off it doesn’t just destroy the victim. It takes out everyone around them, whether they are in the next room or on the other side of the world.
I was not able to speak to Nok again for 22 days. The thin ice I had been standing on for the past 15 months had finally cracked. My good luck as well as Nok’s had finally run out.
After three days of Nok’s phone ringing out and finally dying I got through to her elder sister, Em. She had taken Nok’s sick two-year old son to their grandparents in their village in Eastern Thailand and told me she did not know what had happened to Nok because she could not contact her either.
That turned out to be a lie. Of course Em knew what had happened to Nok. She just did not want to tell me.
It wasn’t until early Monday morning, six days after I lost contact with Nok, that Em emailed to tell me Nok had been arrested. Em’s email simply read:
<<Dear Tom
She did not make bail.
Children's safety in pregnant women. Baby born November 9, 2011.
Need surgery, but I do not understand. That she has drugs.
But she had not been told. Police detected a little bit. I know that you will know about her and your child. Mother and Me stress a lot because we've never come across this issue.
Em>>
What did it all mean?