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On the morning of Monday, 14 April 2008, Aunt Kluay prepared an elaborate feast. It was the second day of the new-year celebration and Kluay wanted to honor the spirits that had overseen her newfound prosperity. Early in the morning she made the short journey to the district market and spent a thousand baht buying two pig’s heads, the accompanying sets of trotters, and some choice portions of intestine and flesh. Back at her mother’s house, which lay just next to her own, Kluay carefully arranged the heads and trotters in large metal bowls. Working with her daughter and niece, she prepared fifteen bowls ofcurry,blood-soakedlarb,andfriedpork.1 Thebowlsweredividedontothree platters. On each of these she added a small container of sticky rice, a bowl of vegetable soup, a bowl of sweet coconut jelly, two small bottles of orange juice, and a cup of water. Shortly before ten o’clock in the morning, Kluay and her daughter carried one of the pig’s heads and two of the platters upstairs to the mainbedroomofhermother’shouse.TheywerejoinedtherebyGrandmother Thip and Grandmother Duang, maternal relatives of Kluay’s deceased father. Grandmother Thip was the custodian of the protective spirit that resided on a small wooden shelf located in the northeast corner of the bedroom. Sitting before the shelf, Thip raised one of the platters of food above her head and, with a few words of offering, presented it to the spirit. Kluay then placed the platter on the spirit’s wooden shelf. The second platter, along with the pig’s head, was left on the floor. This platter of food was offered to another protectivespiritthatnormallyresidedinasmallwoodenshrinejustoutsidethehouse . Thisspiritwasinvitedinsidetojointhefeastandshareinthehonorofthepig’s head. The three women said some brief prayers and urged the spirits to eat. 86 3 Drawing Power into Private Realms Kluay then turned her attention to a much more public demonstration of her relationship with the spirit world. Just outside her family compound, many of the men of the village had assembled to present the new-year offering to the village’s guardian spirit, the Lord of the Lucky Tree. Giant woks of pork curry were bubbling away over outdoor fires. A small group of women carefully folded large leaves to make rustic platters on which the food would be presented to the lord and his assistants. Inside the lord’s shrine, which had been swept and washed for the occasion, a member of the village committee was collecting donations to help defray the costs. Suddenly, Kluay and her husband marched into the midst of the preparations, bearing the second pig’s head, a bottle of whisky, and the third platter of food. Their presence was all the more notable because both were wearing bright yellow shirts, the auspicious color of both Monday and Thailand’s king. They climbed the steps of the shrine and knelt before the long wooden shelf where the lord resides. The lord’s custodian then held the pig’s head and whisky above his head and presented them to the guardian spirit. He placed these offerings, along with the platter of food, on the wooden shelf. Kluay and her husband then returned to their home, while preparations for the village’s communal offering continued. Aunt Kluay embodies some of the main socioeconomic changes that have occurred in Ban Tiam over the past decade. When I first met her in late 2002 she was one of the most active farmers in the village with almost two hectares of garlic fields. Most of the land that she farmed with her husband was rented because she had sold land, and her house, to cover the medical and funeral expenses of her sister and her son, who had both died of AIDS. Along with her husband and daughter she was living in a temporary bamboo hut on a spare plot of land next to her mother’s house. She was determined to recover her former status by means of heavy investment in cash cropping. However, disappointing crop yields and a couple of outright failures left her further in debt. Kluay started talking about giving up agriculture altogether, and for a while she sold food in the district market. As another sideline, she occasionally did odd jobs at the nearby meditation temple, where she was a disciple of a locally famous Buddhist nun. It was at the temple that she met a wealthy shopkeeper from southern Thailand who offered Kluay long-term employment as a caregiver for her elderly mother. Kluay took up...

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