As I finish my preparations to return to Bangkok, I find myself thinking about this month’s Tiger’s Choice. The Happiness of Kati depicts a lifestyle that I have never seen in Thailand, and I find myself wondering if it is a realistic depiction.
Kati and her grandparents live as people in Thailand have for centuries–up until the present day. Their world is clean and quiet and filled with the blessings of nature. When Kati and her grandfather go out in their boat, they row through unpolluted waterways that Kati can dabble her toes in after she and her grandfather finish their picnic lunch. They live in a world untarnished by satellite dishes, cable TV, or mobile phones. There’s not a fast food venue or a 7/11 convenience store in sight. It is a world of the past that all Thai people yearn to return to, and it is portrayed in loving and idealized detail in Jane Vejjajiva’s novel.
And yet within this ideal world, harsh truths intrude and are handled fearlessly. Death, disease, desertion–these are examined carefully and unshrinkingly, through the eyes of a little girl and the family who loves her. It is the softened world that Kati lives in that makes it possible to look at grief and loss with a feeling of acceptance and hope. And it is the well-constructed characters who take life within a matter of sentences who take this book well beyond the realm of moral instruction into the enduring community of classic children’s literature.