Word: brahmins
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...About the only commonality between Thailand's two factions is a shared taste for political voodoo. In mid-March, thousands of red shirts lined up to donate their blood, which was then splashed by the bucketful at the Prime Minister's office and private residence. Brahmin priests attended the bloodletting, casting hexes on the government amid swirls of incense. Such black magic, which dates back to Thailand's pre-Buddhist past, might seem like the domain of superstitious peasants. But last year, yellow-shirt leader and media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul placed sanitary napkins soaked with menstrual blood around a Bangkok...
...images were shocking - and strange. On Tuesday, thousands of Thai protesters splattered buckets of their own blood outside the Prime Minister's office in Bangkok as a Brahmin priest in flowing white robes lit incense, chanted spells and cast a curse upon the government...
...nation that prides itself on its Theravada Buddhist heritage. But Buddhism in Thailand is blended with a brew of Hindu, animist, Khmer, pagan and other beliefs. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the country's 82-year-old constitutional monarch, spent time as a Buddhist monk but also retains astrologers and Brahmin priests at court, as is tradition. So it's no wonder that coup plotters, Prime Ministers and lawmakers have frequently consulted fortune-tellers before making important decisions. Performing dark rites to increase one's power and defeat your adversaries is as pervasive among the political class as bribery and vote buying...
...behind the beeping trucks and fast-rising malls that are so exhilarating to Indians today, everyday souls are sustaining centuries-old ways of bringing gods into their difficult days and homes. In their devotion and humble attentions, Hindu and Muslim and Jain - not to mention menial worker and Brahmin and outlaw - have as much in common as apart. "We may be mortal," as one sculptor of deities (and a Lions Club president) tells William Dalrymple, in his new book Nine Lives, "but our work is immortal...
...Nowhere else than at a sporting event can you gain a greater sense of the city. Because sports are the common denominator between the working stiff and the Brahmin, these venues play host to a mosaic that best represents the region: the civic pride, the self-deprecating humor, the external cynicism, the private hope—all the qualities that give Beantown its wicked distinct charactah...