Benja Ped

Sobs from Jip’s night-time caregiver woke me in the wee hours. She’d just received a call telling her that her brother had been in a motorcycle accident. I agreed that she should go to the hospital to be of help, while I took over her shift.

The next time we saw her, she had a bump on her forehead. She explained that she had unintentionally collided with a farming tool that her father had been carrying. Later we heard that her mother had been slow to recover from an illness.

I expressed my sympathy for all the bad luck that had seemed to pile up in her life. “Oh, it’s because I’m 25,” she said casually, as if that clarified everything. Jip filled me in. It appears that many Thais believe in what’s known as “benja ped,” an old tradition that suggests one’s 25^th year will be a rough one.

It’s a coming-of-age idea. Historically, adult responsibilities kicked in around then. Today, people sometimes choose to be extra careful, or to make extra merit, during this time of transition. I took an informal poll at the office. Roughly half of those I asked had a memory to share from when they were benja ped (the words mean “25” in Pali, an ancient language from which Thai borrows heavily). The others dismissed it as an outdated folk custom.