“When you said “at least this was not a lie,” what did you mean? I mean what are the lies?”
“In society?”
“Yes.”
“There are too many to count.”
“Mention one.”
“All right-religion. My parents are Christians. The servants are Christians. When I was little the servants took me to Sunday school. There, the teachers would always talk about heaven. I couldn’t figure out why if one would be with her family in heaven after she dies, as the church teaches, that wouldn’t mean being there with all humanity regardless of religious preference. If one were to be there with her father and mother, she’d be there with hers, and she with hers, and she with hers, and that seems to me like everyone. After all everybody is supposed to be related to Adam. That to me would mean that heaven is some type of polluted hellhole a million times worse than Bangkok with overcrowding so that you can’t turn around without banging into someone. I don’t know. It isn’t important really. It just shows that nobody thinks anything out. Maybe Heaven is just a Country Club only for Christian Hara Krishnas who say Christ is salvation in rote but I can’t see how they’d extend much of an invitation to me. I never have been much into rote.” Jatupon didn’t know who the Hara Krishnas were or what a Country Club was but these items didn’t detract from his positive impression of her opposition to sententious punctilio. He smiled. This was certainly better than talking to a mosquito.
“Tell me another.”
“Another? All right. I can keep firing them all day. I can’t see how they can claim that King Phraya Taksin was really insane. I mean the man created military strategies that were successful at getting the Burmese out of the country, or at least removed to Chaing Mai. Then he decided to control the church as well as the politics. He became arrogant and said that he was now equal to Buddha and could dictate doctrine and political laws. The people said that he was insane and his military executed him. He didn’t just go from being a great military strategist to insanity and if he was insane, that’s a sickness and they wouldn’t have executed sick people-just people they were scared of.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s easy, Jatupon. Just think it out. Use some intuition and common sense. He just was overly ambitious and they hated him and today we aren’t supposed to think of him at all except as someone who was insane. We don’t even have a road with his name attached to it. Have you ever traveled on Taksin Road? It doesn’t exist. Back then they put the first general in his place and declared him King Rama I. Kings emerged from the Chakri Dynasty when really it should have been the descendents of Taksin. I don’t even know why, in such a poor country, we throw away tax money on these guys.”