ON THURSDAY evening, the young moon awaited us in the sky. The whisker-thin waxing crescent-moon at dusk might have been the youngest moon you have ever seen.
Below it was faint Mercury, so faint, that you needed binoculars to catch a glimpse of it. Above the moon to the left, was the blazing Venus; so bright it could obscure even the young moon.
And it's there that I found peace amid the chaos and anarchy in my homeland. It seemed to befit the beginning of our new year - a better year, or that's what I try to believe.
On Monday, I was stuck in traffic for an hour while the reds were parading the coffins containing bodies of their fallen fellow reds around town. It was hard enough to witness the fanatical behaviour and the sacrilegious act they were committing to the dead bodies, it was worse to be forced to listen to all the things they said on the loudspeakers. Tears of anger and sadness came with the realisation that as a country, we have slipped into an anarchical state. The rationality gap has opened wide and deep and so many have fallen through the crack, with no hope of a quick salvation. The law does not apply to the reds - they are above them. And according to what I heard them say, they could do no wrong. If there were twenty fingers on one hand of the reds, all of them would be pointed at others for all that went wrong.
How we let this happen will be the subject of future socio-political studies worldwide. Besides jasmine rice, tom yam kung - both as a dish and a financial crisis - as well as phad thai, the world will now know Thailand as a state that once descended into lawlessness.
Last April, during the first red uprising, I came down with Bells palsy. Stress, I was told, had wrecked my immunity and allowed the airborne virus to attack the nerves. Last week, I came down with symptoms of a mild heart attack. I was ordered to let go.
"Things will eventually be fine. Just like everything else in life, every problem comes to an end" and "our country always bounces back" are just some of the things people who care told me.
So I started to look around for stories and reasons that could bring solace.
About 10,000 kilometres away from Thailand in Central Africa is the Democratic Republic of Congo or DR Congo (formerly Zaire), whose capital city is Kinshasa. It is a country utterly ravaged by decades of continued wars (one of which was termed "Africa's World War"), unrest, a ruthless dictator and unadulterated corruption.
The World Bank estimated DR Congo's gross national income per capita at US$150 (Bt4,852) in 2008, and the United Nations reported that about 90 per cent of the Congolese live below the poverty line. About 73 per cent of the 60 million living in DR Congo are considered to be malnourished.
Dr Congo's capital, Kinshasa, was described as a "city beyond chaos". Almost 10 million people live in Kinshasa and they are among the poorest on Earth, despite the fact that DR Congo is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world. Kinshasa is also home to the one and only symphony orchestra in Central Africa - "Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanquiste".
When the orchestra started off 15 years ago, only a few dozen amateurs were in it with five violins, and not all of their strings were in place. Now, when the orchestra goes on stage it comprises 200 members. Watching them perform, you can tell that they are the people who have seen the fury of hell, been under the yoke of abject hardship and are facing insuperable odds, but have managed to remain whole.
"I am free! When I sing I am entirely myself, I am in a different world," said a female member of the orchestra.
To them, making music is the compensation for their worldly problems. To them Handel, Verdi, Dvorak, Beethoven, among others, are the saviours. It is their joy. It takes them far away, to another world.
They all have day jobs, most of which are menial. They practise in the dusty, bustling streets or wherever they can find a spot. They are electricians, hairdressers, small merchants and the unemployed. Most can barely scrape together enough every day to feed themselves and their families.
Some of their instruments are still makeshift. When a violin string breaks, they replace it with electrical wire. They invent tools that will enable them to repair their musical instruments. They make their own suits and dresses to wear at the performances. Rehearsals take place in several shifts to accommodate the real-life obligations of musicians and singers. Together, out of sheer determination, they make music, regardless of their circumstances. It provides for a fundamental affirmation that human spirit can triumph in spite of, and not because of, obstacles.
In a German documentary "Kinshasa Symphony", by Claud Wischmann and Martin Baer, the orchestra was playing Beethoven's Symphony No 9 "Ode to Joy" - one of the composer's most highly regarded masterpieces. Beethoven completed this monumental last symphony in 1824 when he was completely deaf.
The performance was a magnificent and inspiring image of human courage and determination to free themselves from the vicious cycle of brutality, oppression, poverty and wars that had gripped their lives for decades. During those moments, there were not the vanquished, but were the victors.
This story is meant to be a gift to the readers for this Thai New Year.
The waxing moon will soon turn full and what has gone down has nowhere else to go but up.
If the Kinshasa orchestra teaches us anything, it is that the resilient and prevailing human spirit refuses to be broken, and they - the Kinshasans - work hard with all their might not to let that happen.
This article was originally meant to have been published on Thursday, but had to be held back due to limited space. We apologise to our readers for the inconvenience.
