Lives of Thai Temple Boys: A Collection of Short Stories from Thailand

By Maitree Limpichart and Apitchaya Sureepong

Lives of Thai Temple Boys is a cross-cultural coming-of-age collection of stories based on the author's experiences in the late 1950s and early 1960s as an adolescent temple boy from the South of Thailand then living at a Buddhist temple and going to school in Bangkok.

Although they very much embody aspects of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Middle Way Multimedia & Publishing Services
• Release date: Jun 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9780989443227

Maitree Limpichart

MAITREE LIMPICHART (Author) is a well-known and prolific author, a past president of the Thai Writers Association, a former Director of Public Relations for the Metropolitan Waterworks Authority and a one-time candidate for the Thai senate. Born in the southern province of Nakhon Sri Thamarat, Mr. Limpichart holds an undergraduate degree from Sukhothai Thammathirat University. Over a long and distinguished career as one of Thailand's most popular authors, he has written numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, including 20 novels, some 17 collections of short stories, 3 memoirs (of which A Man in Saffron Robes is his most popular) as well as numerous picture books for children, travel books, essays and magazine articles. Today he writes popular columns for the influential Thai newspapers Siam Rath and the Daily News, and has begun to publish works that combine his talent for the written word with his artistry in painting and sketching, such as his acclaimed Muek Dam Bon Kradat Khao (Black Ink on White Paper). He has two daughters and a son and lives with his wife Pakpring in Samut Prakan province near Bangkok.

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Introduction

Residing at Buddhist temples in up-country provinces—particularly in rural areas—are young boys, usually of elementary-school age or at most in their early teens. There these temple boys perform such varied tasks as emptying chamber pots and cuspidors, washing monks’ almsbowls and saffron-colored robes, rubbing and polishing wooden floors, toting around the ubiquitous food carriers of covered stacked-dishes called pinto, and undertaking various other chores and errands asked of them.⁴

In Bangkok, by contrast, temple boys are in reality young men, engaged in more advanced vocational or even university studies. It is not likely that there one would come across very many young boys in the elementary grades.

It is difficult for temple boys in Bangkok to be close to the monks, since there are usually too many for the monks to look after easily, and many of the boys do not serve the monks as they should. Some boys may be unknown to the abbot of the temple at which they might have resided for years. Rising early in the morning, they bathe, dress, and then hurry off to school. If they got up later in the morning they’d be late for school. Except for the younger boys who go to elementary school near the temple, few stick around for a morning meal of food collected during the monks’ early morning almswalks. The younger boys thus have time in the morning to attend to the monks and partake of the food left over from the monks’ morning meal. ⁵

For several years, when I was a student in Bangkok, I was one of these boys from up-country. More than a hundred boys lived in the temple where I resided. We came from every corner of Thailand. Some were related to the monks, but many were referred and entrusted into their care.

With a place to sleep and a table on which to write, we lived simply. We’d always be on the lookout for scraps of wood from which to hammer together a table or chair, with the result that the furniture we fashioned was never of a consistent or uniform height. A mat placed on the floor and a pillow usually served as bedding.

In the evening we’d sit and study by the light of a single bulb that lit only our tabletops. We never considered using a brighter, stronger bulb to light up the entire room, for the rules of the temple forbade us from doing so because it was wasteful. Whenever we ironed our clothes, we’d first have to start a fire because the irons we used were heated by burning pieces of charcoal placed in them. Before we completed our ironing, we’d invariably break out in a profuse sweat. Whoever was the first to iron would have a long line of boys stretched out behind him because there were those who were too lazy to stoke the fire to keep it hot. We weren’t allowed to use an electric iron and didn’t, unless of course we did so surreptitiously. It was worth the risk, but once caught, one had to—as they say—pay the price, and offending boys had to face the odious task of cleaning out foul smelling toilets.

When I first came to the temple I was more than a little ill at ease, but I tried to prepare myself to face what was to come. I came to see how I’d benefit by living at the temple, to see myself more clearly as I struggled with and became more aware of my aspirations and what the future might have in store for me. I came to experience the camaraderie and affection that developed among the boys, with the monks, and even with the dogs that could always be found living on the temple grounds.

Most of us were conscientious about our studies, if for no other reason than they were the only road to a brighter future.

In the evening we’d each sit at our own table engrossed in study. On getting up in the morning, we’d memorize passages from our textbooks. Only a few of the boys were not very interested in studying.

Most of us came from poor families where having to end a meal still feeling hungry was an obstacle to studying, since it left us without a clear mind and preoccupied with hunger.

Almost all of us lacked suitable clothing to ward off the chill of the cold season. Some had torn blankets with holes. Would the reader believe that in the evening, when it was particularly cold, boys could be seen sitting around a fire outside on the temple grounds chatting with one another while trying to keep warm?

When the cold season came around we’d take the clothes we weren’t wearing to be washed so that we might wear them as another layer to ward off the chill and prevent the cold air from touching our skin. Little needs to be said of how odd we looked in our improvised layered garments.

Each morning when we boarded a bus to go to school, we’d have to brace ourselves against the cold. When a blast of chilled air blew in through an open window, we’d shut it and clasp our books tightly in our arms.

We were compelled to face and struggle to overcome our hardships by whatever means we might devise. Such perseverance would prove useful to each of us in personal ways later in life.

Here in this collection of short stories, I recount sketches of some I knew in my years as a temple boy. My hope is that these stories will impart something of what our lives were like to those on the other side of the temple wall. For the most part these stories are true-to-life as I remember them. I’ve reworked actual events in only a few and insignificant ways. To protect the privacy of those I‘ve written about I’ve altered names and other identifying attributes as I thought necessary. Being true to life, few of these stories can escape the telling of hardships and the struggle to survive.

I wrote the stories in Lives of Thai Temple Boys⁶ over a period of many years. When I thought of the past and whenever a memory of my days as a young boy in the temple came to me, I’d write about it then and there and have it printed in various periodicals—such as Chao Krung, Satrisan, Fa Muang Thai—whenever the timing was right. So, if readers feel these stories are not chronological and do not flow as they should, I do