In Thailand, a bizarre dance ritual is performed at almost every Western embassy function. The guests arrive – a visiting trade delegation from the UK, perhaps, and a number of potential contacts from the local Thai community – and drinks and canapés are served. And then the conversations start, about business or politics – serious stuff.
The Western guests approach to what feels like a comfortable distance from the Thais and begin to talk; the Thais, embarrassed to have someone standing so unreasonably far away from them, shuffle forward a few inches. The Westerners, puzzled at this advance, retreat away from them, and the Thais, smiling politely but feeling as if they are having a long-distance conversation by loudhailer from one ship to another, advance again. And so it goes on, with little groups of Westerners moving slowly backwards around the room, followed by the earnest and well-meaning Thais.
The problem is simply that neither side appreciates the expectations of the other in relation to their personal space. What seems to someone used to Western drinks parties to be a reasonable distance to stand apart is a peculiar experience for the Thais. Wanting to be friendly and welcoming, they move forward – and so the dance begins. It’s hard to understand local customs that are so deeply ingrained that they are seldom talked about. And so it is with krengjai.
To outsiders, the ancient Thai system of krengjai (kreng-JEYE) may seem to be little more than formalized deference – a stultifying sense of hierarchy that affects every area of life. And it’s true that, traditionally, teachers, parents, company directors, senior police officers and other high-ranking government servants and officials would expect to be treated with respect, homage, reverence and even fear by their juniors. It would be rude and inappropriate to criticize them or even question their decisions – and extremely unfriendly to stand so far away from them while they had a conversation. But that is only a small part of krengjai.
Sometimes it’s translated as consideration, but that is a feeble echo of the way the word resonates in Thailand. To a Thai, krengjai is an all-embracing concern to demonstrate awareness of other people’s feelings, to show them politeness and respect and never to make them lose face. The word literally means ‘respect-heart’, and it involves not just surface courtesy or deference but a deeply felt desire to make people feel comfortable and at ease.
Foreign tourists sometimes claim that if you ask a Thai a direct question – ‘Is this the bus for Phuket?’ for instance – he will be unwilling because of krengjai to disappoint you by saying no. The safest way to find out if it is the bus for Phuket, the story goes, is to ask where it is bound, without giving a hint of where you want to go. Similarly, tradesmen may agree to appointments that they have no intention of keeping, just to avoid the embarrassment of a refusal. These examples are a misunderstanding of a feeling that reflects Buddhist ideas that one should not seek fulfilment for oneself but concentrate on achieving happiness for others. In Thailand, thoughtlessness, selfishness or unkindness are deep and lasting disgraces.
Understanding the way other people see the world is one of those things, like playing with your children, watching the sun set, or smiling, that are simple, unalloyed good and positive things to do. Perhaps having the word krengjai in English could help to achieve that understanding in some small way. If it did, it would certainly make the world a happier place.
Inat
(Serbian)
A stubborn expression of courage, often with nationalistic associations
Back in 1999, when NATO’s bombs were showering down on Belgrade, the Serbian word inat (EE-nat) became a favourite of Western journalists trying to explain the frustrating refusal of the Serb inhabitants to do what was obviously in their best interests and surrender. Civilians were walking the streets with paper targets pinned to their chests in a ‘Come and ’ave a go if you think you’re ’ard enough’ challenge to the pilots thousands of feet above them. One report described a Serb fighter boasting about how he would tackle the bombers with his pistol. Runners in the Belgrade marathon dodged potholes as they ran past the ruined buildings of the city, determined to finish the race, bombs or no bombs.
It was, journalists suggested, all down to inat – a word inherited from Turkish after centuries of Ottoman occupation, which means spite or stubbornness. But, as they were keen to explain, it means a lot more than that as well.
Inat has a sense of having your back to the wall, of being determined not to do what is asked of you. Inat suggests you are ready to cut off your nose to spite your face, and your ears and lips as well, if that will make your point. It’s an absolute refusal to countenance surrender. If chivalry, gallantry and all the panoply of military virtues traditionally belong to the wealthy and privileged, then perhaps inat is a stolidly peasant expression of stoic courage.
It would be a mistake to see it as an emotion that is only expressed in wartime. A schoolboy being bullied who turns to face his attackers, ready to be beaten up but not to do whatever it is that they want from him, is driven by inat. So is the worker who is pushed too far by an overbearing boss and finally tells him in no uncertain terms exactly where he can stick his job. So is the driver in a narrow lane who refuses to reverse out of the way of another car, because he reckons that he was there first. Later, as they mop their bloody nose, clear their desk or inspect the scratches on their car, they may well feel a twinge of regret, but there will always be a defiant little bit of them feeling that they did what had to be done.
A dangerous hard drug for a government to feed its people.
In a war, though, inat really comes into its own, and it is seized upon by governments who have little else to offer their people. As the bombs fell on Belgrade in 1999, the inat of the people fed into the story of a defiantly Christian race under attack down the centuries from a succession of powerful and brutal outside forces, and so it conveniently stilled the voices that might otherwise have been heard from civilians demanding how the hell the government had got them into this mess. A lot of people thought at the time that the strongly nationalist government of President Slobodan Milosevic was quietly encouraging this upsurge of inat as a specifically Serbian unifying force of national pride.
Inat, in fact, can be a dangerous hard drug for a government to feed its people, building up a feeling of persecution, a resentment of outsiders and a sense that it is us against the world – catnip for potentially violent nationalists.
In 1999, there was nothing specifically Serb about either the emotion or the government’s exploitation of it. For people anywhere in the world sitting terrified under a modern bombardment of high explosives, fire and shards of red-hot metal, the only realistic alternatives are probably blind panic and a dogged stubbornness that takes no account of life or death but is just determined not to give in. Much the same feelings were encouraged, for much the same reasons of fostering implacable and defiant nationalism and improving morale, in the London of 1940, when the battered inhabitants looked out on the devastation of the Blitz and snarled, at least according to a government propaganda film, ‘We can take it.’ In fact, the most famous expression of inat is in English, not Serbian: ‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender …’