Lucky

As Joe and I climbed out of a Bangkok taxi in front of our hotel Sunday afternoon, the driver said to us, with a sweetness not usually associated with Taxi drivers, "Good luck to you!" Joe said later, "Every time somebody says that, it just breaks your heart."

That's because in Thailand the utterance is not a routine "Have a nice day." It is a frequently used expression of a deep belief in the power and importance of luck, and it is often said with real feeling.

This taxi driver was not anybody we knew. But it had been a long ride across the city. (We had hiked a mile on foot and then ridden two ferries to a distant wat and were practically crawling on the pavement in the pounding heat when we finally flagged down an air-conditioned cab for the return trip.) The driver spoke enough English to chat about his sister, who is happily working as a cashier in untropical Colorado. When we parted after half an hour of friendly small talk, it seemed like the most natural thing for the driver to say, "Good luck to you," and as has become our habit, we wished him good luck also.

People throughout Southeast Asia believe in luck and in the signs and rituals that will make them luckier. These beliefs are vestiges of the Brahmanism and animism that suffused Buddhism as it spread eastward from India. While Americans say "good luck" to one another, and usually mean it, the expression lacks the weight and feeling it carries in a culture where good luck is actively courted and bad luck kept at bay through charms and rituals. (There is also something about that added "to you" that makes it feel more genuine, almost intimate.)

Amulets can ward off bad luck and just about every Thai wears one or more, usually on a gold chain around the neck. These charms usually bear the likeness of the Buddha or of a revered monk. Amulets with especially formidable magic are bought and sold for large sums. Monday's Bangkok Post ran a story about a woman in Nakhon Si Thammarat who cornered the market on an amulet whose value shot up after the funeral and public cremation of a "well-respected local aristocrat" who was a big believer in this particular talisman. Duangchanok Amornsak said she had been making only 10,000 baht a month ($350) as a dance teacher, and now she takes in as much as 200,000 baht selling Jatukarm Ramathep amulets, as well as related books, pictures and T-shirts.

Many of the amulets came from India, where they were originally sold to pilgrims visiting Buddhist holy sites. Different amulets offer different kinds of protection. Among the most specialized are "palad khik," which literally means "deputy penis." These linga-shaped charms are worn by men at waist level to protect the genitalia against harm. Some women carry them in their handbags to stave off purse snatchers.

To bring good luck in business, romance or any other area of life, Thais and others in the region make regular offerings of cash, food, incense and flowers at the spirit houses built on posts in front of most structures, at temples and shrines, and at the "lak muang." That last one is the "city pillar," a centrally located tall, lotus-shaped object that can be especially helpful when offerings to it are generous. The cash, or whole chicken, or pig's head left at the lak muang, in addition to bringing the donor good luck, will end up at the nearest wat.

Machinery apparently works better when it is garlanded with marigolds. We have seen flowers atop boat engines, on taxi and bus dashboards and, in Hua Hin harbor, dangling from a Thai Royal Navy gun turret. (We are curious about Thai Airways but have not gained entrance to a cockpit.) People often wrap fabric around trees thought to be sacred, mainly banyan and fig, and stuff flowers and incense into the wrapping. At Wat Arun on Sunday, a banyan tree near the prang (Khmer-style tower) built by Rama II (it looks like a Buck Rodgers "futuristic" tower, except it is embedded all over with multi-colored broken Chinese porcelain) had been festooned with gifts left by dozens of good-luck seekers.

Some of these gestures and rituals are lovely to behold, but not all. In Cambodia, and perhaps elsewhere, farm kids capture birds and stick them in cages. These birds are then sold near shrines to people who release the birds, hoping this "gift" to the birds will bring good luck. But why not leave the birds alone in the first place? One might expect Cambodians in particular to be less whimsical about captivity.

Do these rituals "work"? People swear by them and cite instance after instance of success in life or danger averted through the use of charms---and conversely of ill fortune that is the result of an insufficient or mis-application of magic. The woman selling amulets in Nakhon Si Thammarat, seems to be onto something, though. This is where Buddhism perhaps overrides older beliefs. She told the Post, "I don't try to persuade anyone to believe me or to buy the talismans from me. There is no point in owning the amulet but not behaving well. Jatukarm Ramathep will only protect decent people, bringing them good luck."

In the United States, we might suspect that her attorney insisted that the amulet seller provide this caveat. But the Thais really do a nice job of having it all---of running a modern society that works reasonably well, and at the same time observing all sorts of colorful (to us) superstitions that in their unscientific---even anti-scientific---ways would seem to impede progress and yet somehow don't. There is a kind of tender complexity to people in this part of the world, especially the Thais. It is a sometimes incomprehensible nimbleness of mind and spirit that is part of what makes them so beguiling.