'The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth'

Translating books of fiction or non-fiction is never easy. There're nuances that we can't quite catch even though we're native speakers of both languages. It requires a whole host of life experiences and chats with the author to get an accurate translation that keeps to the true ideals of a book. 

Veeraporn Nitiprapha's 'The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth' ไส้เดือนตาบอดในเขาวงกต (written in 2015) is one such book. The author วีรพร นิติประภา writes in Thai, and it's always tough-going for me to complete her books. This book was translated in 2018 by acclaimed film critic Kong Rithdee. He did an excellent job with this author and the story.

The story traces the lives of three orphans from childhood to their adult lives and choices — sisters Chalika and Chareeya, and later on, the man both would have a deeper romantic interest in, Pran. However, one felt like it's love, and the other, a lifeboat. Pran loves both women, but his heart is only full of Chareeya. He doesn't feel for Chalika in the pained and passionate way he feels for Chareeya. He's looking for a substitute because Chareeya doesn't seem to love him back in the same way. (Reviews here, here and here.)

I'm not sure I like the ending. It's damn tragic. I was so pleased that friends gifted me this book. I'm not too fond of the genre, but it's worth a read. It'd be better than watching this on television as lakorn. Glad to be able to read it in English then, and flip to and fro faster than I can toggle the slider to forward and rewind on a television screen.

Chareeya, born premature on the day that her Mother discovered Father's long-standing affair, seems to never be able to catch a break in her romantic liaisons as an adult. She left her little town with democracy activist Thana and lived in Bangkok. 

She then worked in a record shop and fell in love with an egotistical and narcissist journalist Natee who doesn't quite love her back. But worse of all, she acquired a habit of popping sleeping pills, and some other weird substances. She kinda keeps Pran around like a lovesick puppy, but doesn't get bother with him till regret set in. She has love by her side, loses it through her own indecisiveness, and she tries so hard to get it back, but it's all for naught.

Chalika never quite found love, and she stayed in the little town, living in the ancestral home by the river. She runs a successful business selling traditional Thai sweets. Her dessert shop tends to sell out by 2pm, and she's happy to close up and have time to relax and read. Like her mother, she's deeply sentimental. She falls in love with Pran who doesn't quite love her back. When Pran disappears without telling her why, she crashes and becomes a shell of a human. The desserts she makes become bitter, and the business folded. She pretty much lost her mind from then on. 

Pran had a tough childhood, got by, and worked as a musician playing at bars for a living. The Bleeding Heart was a pub that held many stories of Pran and Chareeya. I wouldn't call him a bridge between the sisters. He loves Chareeya who then hurts him in her choice of Natee, and he leaves. He cares for Chalika but doesn't tell her everything he feels because he doesn't love her in the same way. What garbage! He's the reason for the growing chasm between the sisters. I totally blame him for being weak-minded and well, being an asshole. He can be sooooo tortured, but he's a useless 'romantic hero'. 

I don't know how much the concept of past lives and Buddhist karma are weaved into the background of the characters' lives. Love makes us lost. Ghosts of the past surround the characters and never leave. All the humans in this story seem to be like earthworms flailing around in the labyrinth of life, and not getting out. They're doomed to repeat the tragedy of the previous generation. Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors? We are all earthworms, maybe.

He didn't tell her that in that despair and unforgiving loneliness, he had set out to find her, staggering into the ruins of ragged memories and falling into sweet and warm embraces he knew he shouldn't have fallen into, and wandering into places he knew — with absolute certainty — he shouldn't have wandered into, only to find that she wasn't there. He didn't tell her that he always felt like crying, that he had nowhere to go. And he didn't tell her about what had happened between him and Chalika, that had hadn't meant for it to happen, that he hadn't meant for anything to happen the way it did. 

.....................

When she asked him to have lunch with her again one Monday, Pran replied politely that he was busy. Chareeya didn't press him, as if surrendering to the distance that now separated them like a curtain of fog. He didn't tell her that he had already given his Mondays to Chalika.