THAILAND'S MOMENT OF TRUTH - ZENJOURNALIST

have shouted back: “If the people do not forsake me, how can I forsake them?” But
the car went so quickly and had passed him by. [His Majesty Bhumibol Adulyadej,
When I Left Siam for Switzerland, Wong Wannakhadi, August 1947]
Over the years, as with so much else, the story was mythologized and altered by the palace
public relations machine. By 1999 it had become this:
His Majesty’s car was slowly making its way to the airport through a packed crowd
of well-wishers eager to catch a glimpse of their new monarch, having heard that he
was to leave the kingdom again to continue his studies at the University of Lausanne.
From out of the mass of human bodies crowded around his vehicle a lone voice
caught the attention of the young king as he sat gazing out at his subjects.
“Don’t forsake the people, Your Majesty!”
The voice prompted what was to be an almost legendary but silent reply from within
the car:
“If the people do not forsake me, how can I forsake them?”
That must have been quite an extraordinary moment for the young king, who
could not have expected that plea, containing as it did much of the people’s hopes
and aspirations for their young sovereign. Those words shouted out from a crowd
affirmed the Thai people’s love for and trust in their monarchy. The reply, as always
from His Majesty, was concise and to the point; he would return when the time came.
[National Identity Office, Strength of the Land]
The “reply” was never spoken, as Bhumibol himself made clear, and anybody who has
listened to one of Bhumibol’s discursive and inscrutable birthday speeches will know that the
king is not always concise and to the point. But when it comes to royal mythology, the truth is
rarely allowed to get in the way of a good fairy story.
At the airport, Bhumibol and his grieving mother boarded a plane provided by Britain’s Royal
Air Force. Because of fears about the king’s safety it had been kept strictly monitored ever
since it landed. The royal astrologer fixed the time of departure:
On the arrival of an RAF York aircraft sent by the British to fly the King to
Switzerland, British troops guarded it continuously, it was floodlit at night, and the
crew were forbidden the city. The time of day fixed by the Royal Astrologer for the
royal departure bothered the pilot, who wanted an earlier time in order to cross the
mountainous border before the south-west monsoon turned the weather against him.
But the Royal Astrologer could not be moved, and indeed Bhumibol and his mother
were carried safely from the scene of such a dreadful memory. [Krueger, The Devil’s
Discus]
The 18-year-old King Rama IX of Siam in his school uniform, and the orphan girl who
had married a celestial prince and become mother to two Thai kings in the most tragic
circumstances, flew back towards Switzerland, and towards Villa Vadhana, where they had
spent so many halcyon years before the tragedy that changed everything:
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The flight zigzagged through a British empire now dying. Bodyguards were dressed
in white mess jackets on the plane, and it refuelled only at secured British airfields.
Outward bound, there had been no sense of danger, and the crews had remarked on
Mama’s youthful looks and energy. Now she was listless and haggard beside the
empty seat. [Stevenson, The Revolutionary King]