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Don't touch me
otherwise you have to marry me!

This happened some sixteen years back, but if you think it isn't relevant today, you just don't know us Thais.

"Don't you see? Because of you, all the people in the family got sick and lots more bad luck will come knocking on our door, if we don't do anything." This is my uncle, and he was really angry. He was talking to - shouting at, actually - my cousin Pai, who was sitting quietly in a corner of the room, her face flooded with tears.

And what had she done?

It was like this. She'd asked one of her male friends to change a light bulb in her bedroom, and poor Pai was being punished because a guy from another family shouldn't walk into an unmarried girl's room. If he does, and someone finds out, as happened to my cousin, then whether they like it or not, they have to get married, otherwise the phii - the spirit of the house - would get angry and make every one in the household sick.

As I say, this happened 16 years ago, and it made me wonder - just who or what is this phii, and if it's supposed to be protective and friendly, why should it be so nasty to us? And if there wasn't any phii, would cousin Pai have had to get married?

Later, when I grew up, things become much clearer.

Even though Buddhism became the dominant religion in Thailand, the concept of phii has continued to play a big part in all our lives, especially in Lanna - that's the North. And what I began to understand about it was that it's an important means to control people's behaviour. There is phii in every house, and if a member of the family gets out of line - for example, if a wife has a relationship with another man - what we believe is that this lack of respect for the phii will cause the older members in the family to become sick. And where younger people are concerned, it's not just going into someone's room. We have to learn not to touch members of the other sex however innocently, because they have their phii watching and guarding them since they were born. And just touching someone, let alone having a relationship out of marriage is phid phii - that is, an offence against the phii, and has to be followed as soon as possible by a ceremony called sia phi.

Of course, money is involved too. If a man breaks the rules, and doesn't want to get married, then he has to give money to the girl's family to pay for the loss of face and the bad reputation that it causes.

As to the ceremony of sia phi, the man has to prepare food such as boiled chicken, boiled pig's head, whisky and a sum of money along with flowers and incense, then bring them to the woman's house which is the phii's locus. Normally it lives in the main pillar of the house, which has a shelf attached to it, where Lanna people make offerings to show their respect and ensure the phii continues to give them protection. And after this ceremony at the woman's house, the 'offending' woman has to go to the man's and pay respects to his family spirit and ask for forgiveness. After this, the couple have paid their ceremonial dues, and can enter each of the families' space without causing offence.

But I don't want to give the impression this ancestral spirit only punishes family offenders. It's also the invisible guard of the house and thieves have to think twice about breaking in and stealing property. After all, they know the spirit is vengeful, and if the family has been attentive to it, will certainly make life difficult for them. So it's not just a moral presence but also a sort of insurance policy. Better pay your dues if you want to be safe, in other words.

There's one matter I continue to be puzzled about, though. How is it that in the past, men pretty well always managed to have more than one wife, and no-one got sick. Could it be that the phii are all male and therefore biased? Which wouldn't be fair on the females.

But I don't think that's the case, and in fact traditionally - so the old people tell us - the house phii are mainly female. So I'm beginning to wonder if now that we have actual laws about equality of treatment between the sexes - don't you think maybe the female phii are pleased about it, and may be getting a little more uppity in their spirit world. And mightn't that in turn have positive effects for us on the distaff side?

Too late for my cousin Pai, though, poor girl.