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Magazine
EXPERIENCE
Guns of Songkran
SHONALI MUTHALALY
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Get ready to get wet if you happen to be in Songkran, Thailand, on the Buddhist New Year Day. Behind every innocuous smile is a steaming gun waiting to drench you…
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The water guns are everywhere, and available in a bewildering variety. Huge, magnificent ones, with pumps that can shoot all the way across the street. Small James Bond-style revolvers, for close range shooting. And guns attached to backpacks to save time on refuelling.
PHOTO: SHONALI MUTHALALY
Gotcha! It’s dangerous out there on the streets...
I need a gun. So I stride up to a counter, pulling on my sunglasses, curling my lip and trying to look as sinister as possible. (Honestly, I would have much preferred to conduct this interview in a dark alley. Just for the atmosphere.) The arm dealer
s are everywhere, and weapons are laid out in tantalising rows.
I slam my money down on the table decisively. And pick up a Mickey Mouse revolver. Mickey Mouse? Well, it looks minimally more threatening than the pink contraption featuring a giggling Donald Duck.
It’s Songkran. And everyone in Bangkok is armed.
Songkran is the Buddhist New Year festival, a time to reconnect with family. A time for new beginnings. And gentle wishes, conveyed with a little sprinkle of jasmine scented water. That little sprinkle, however, has turned into an excuse for a full blown deluge, and now Songkran is everyone’s favourite reason for the largest water fight on the planet.
Everyone’s armed
By sweltering mid-April, tourists from around the world congregate on Khao San Road, a favourite with backpackers, and the two adjoining roads, armed with high powered water pistols, dinky squirt guns, water bombs and water rifles. The locals use guns too. But they’re also masters of guerrilla warfare: pouring unexpected bottles of iced water down people’s necks, darting from balcony to balcony armed with brimming bowls, sidling up to unsuspecting strangers to empty water packets on their heads.
Blissfully oblivious of the significance of the day, a friend and I land in Bangkok, on a stopover, and decide to explore the city. Khao San Road, we hear, is a nice place to lunch, so we thumb down a tuk tuk and head in that direction.
Then, in the midst of a traffic jam, we notice a grown man aiming a gun at us.
It would be blood-curling, if it wasn’t for the fluorescent green, manically cheery Micky Mouse water pack slung across his body. To our utter disbelief, he shoots with cold-blooded precision, directing a jet of iced water right at us, drenching our clothes. The tuk-tuk driver chuckles. Two more men arrive, and lift their violently coloured guns. Mr Tuk tuk is so contorted with glee he can barely drive now. In about five seconds we’re dripping wet, our shoes are drenched and our handbags soaked.
Join them
We quickly figure out that we’ve landed smack in the middle of a water war. And since we can’t get mad, we decide to get even. Tipped off by word on the street (gunmen can be startlingly friendly), we shove our bags, phones and cameras into a locker. Swap our shoes for the ubiquitous Thai rubber slippers, conveniently sold on the road. And put our gun and ammunition money into plastic packets. Then, humming the theme tune from Spiderman, we head out, two soggy superheroes desperate for hair dryers and justice.
The walk to our arms dealer is fraught with danger. Children, each roughly half the size of a jam bottle, wander the streets like reckless renegades firing at will. Saintly looking teenage girls beckon to us sympathetically, and then pelt us with bowls of water from conveniently positioned barrels. Open jeeps bearing packs of gun-toting people go past, soaking everyone along the way.
The water guns are everywhere, and available in a bewildering variety. Huge, magnificent ones, with pumps that can shoot all the way across the street. Small James Bond-style revolvers, for close range shooting. And guns attached to backpacks to save time on refuelling. Every five paces, there are stalls selling water. Specifically iced water, bristling with ice cubes. After all, why hit someone with comfortably lukewarm water, when you can make them squeal with a blast of ice.
I’d forgotten how much fun water revolvers can be. A warm bonhomie sets in. Shooting at people makes barriers of all sorts disappear astonishingly quickly. By the time we settle down for a lunch featuring fragrant Thai green curry, studded with supple potatoes and spiked with fragrant lemon grass, at the Sawasdee Terrace restaurant, all the gun men and women feel like old friends. There’s shooting across the tables (making the curry slightly watery) till a waiter officiously puts up a hand-written sign forbidding water fights indoors. We meekly put down our guns, and pick up the cheque. A minute later the same waiter’s pointing my gun at me, with a maniacal gleam in his eye. I leave a hefty tip.
Clearly, everyone gets to let their hair down on Songkran. You can drench anyone, even the police. (Though a Thai friend suggests aiming at policemen stationed far away from where you live, to prevent vengeful fines in the future.) According to the Bangkok Post, this year, the Chiang Mai Municipality used more than a tonne of potassium alum crystal to purify water in the old city moat to ensure that it was safe for the annual “aqua splashing frenzy”. Chiang Mai, a 700-year-old city in the north of Thailand, is acknowledged to be the centre of the festival, drawing about 2,00,000 tourists every year.
Civilised fun
By evening, there are live bands performing, people dancing on stools and barrels and the streets are crammed with a fascinating variety of people, from different countries, ages and walks of life. Surprisingly, it’s all very gentle and civilised, despite the abundance of alcohol, water and now white clay, dabbed by the Thai people on all our faces, to wish us for the New Year. Everyone’s clearly having the time of their life.
Who would have thought guns could promote such joyful harmony?
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