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    Samudra Manthan

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    Clifford Terry
    The document summarizes a Hindu myth about the churning of the sea of milk by the devas and demons to obtain the nectar of immortality. It describes how Lord Vishnu helped the devas by tricking the demons out of receiving the nectar. The myth is represented in a sculpture at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. The document then draws an analogy between the myth and Thai politics, suggesting politicians also use deceit and trickery to achieve their goals.

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    Samudra Manthan

    Uploaded by

    Clifford Terry
    126 views1 page
    The document summarizes a Hindu myth about the churning of the sea of milk by the devas and demons to obtain the nectar of immortality. It describes how Lord Vishnu helped the devas by tricking the demons out of receiving the nectar. The myth is represented in a sculpture at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. The document then draws an analogy between the myth and Thai politics, suggesting politicians also use deceit and trickery to achieve their goals.

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    Observations on the Thai political crisis

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    The document summarizes a Hindu myth about the churning of the sea of milk by the devas and demons to obtain the nectar of immortality. It describes how Lord Vishnu helped the devas by tricking the demons out of receiving the nectar. The myth is represented in a sculpture at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. The document then draws an analogy between the myth and Thai politics, suggesting politicians also use deceit and trickery to achieve their goals.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    126 views1 page

    Samudra Manthan

    Uploaded by

    Clifford Terry
    The document summarizes a Hindu myth about the churning of the sea of milk by the devas and demons to obtain the nectar of immortality. It describes how Lord Vishnu helped the devas by tricking the demons out of receiving the nectar. The myth is represented in a sculpture at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. The document then draws an analogy between the myth and Thai politics, suggesting politicians also use deceit and trickery to achieve their goals.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 1

    Samudra churning or Samudra manthan is the Hindu myth about the churning of the sea of milk.

    Using the great naga wrapped around mount Mandhara on top of Lord Vishnu in the form of a tortoise, the devas and demons cooperated in churning the sea to achieve the ultimate prize, the nectar of immortality, Amrita. Even though the Amrita was supposed to be shared by both the devas and demons, Lord Vishnu used trickery to deny the demons the nectar. Embolden by the effects of the amrit, the gods would go on to defeat the demons. You can see a sculptural representation of this myth in the foyer of Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. Although this is meant to symbolise a spiritual exercise, it could also be used as an analogy for the political process and this especially true in Thai politics. For all their good intentions, politicians must ultimately resort of deceit, trickery and misrepresentation, to achieve their goals and win the hearts and minds of their constituents. We hope to use this space as a forum to make some sense of what it is all about and in the spirit of reconciliation nd out what it is the Thai people really want after the election. A number of years ago, I was in Vientiane, Laos preparing to take the train that evening to Bangkok. I was traveling with a friend, Lucas Li, who was also a lm maker and neither of us knew what would greet us when we arrived back in Bangkok in the morning. The events the past several weeks had thrown the whole region into turmoil. Protests by the 'yellow shirts' had moved from the parliament house to the airports and no ights were coming in or out of Thailand. It didn't really matter too much to either of us, Lucas was meeting family in Bangkok and I didn't have anywhere I had to be for a few weeks. Before we left to go our separate ways the next morning, I mentioned to Lucas that he should think about developing a lm about what was happening here. A few months later, Lucas and I met up back in Australia, while in Thailand a new government was in power and protest against that government was being lead by the 'red shirts'. With these new developments, I brought up the subject of a lm again and we talked about different ways we could approach this. Fast forward to this years Australian International Documentary Conference and again we were talking seriously about developing a lm on the Thai political landscape. This time we felt we had a pretty good handle on how to approach this type of lm. The idea was to make the lm more about the people rather than the groups or political ideology. We would want to include families from various socio-economic strata and political leanings in Thai society and investigate how the political machinations have affected them and where they think the solutions lie. As luck would have it, Lucas will be in Thailand just before the upcoming election to help a family member on a unrelated project. We plan to use this opportunity to canvas opinion amongst the Thai people and nd suitable participants for our lm. This blog will serve as forum for what we nd and hopefully help shape our lm.

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