Vitthaya Vejjajiva recently unveiled his first published book entitled Phan Pheua Phandin (Phan: For King and Country), a biography of Phan Wannamethee, secretary-general of the Thai Red Cross Society and president of the World Fellowship of Buddhists.
That tag reveals the man’s current responsibilities, but is woefully insufficient to describe a very active life and all that he has achieved during his 90 years on this Earth. What makes Phan stand head and shoulders above most of his peers — apart from his unusual height, of course — is his humility, his perseverance, his gentle and forgiving nature, his patience and goodwill towards others and his total commitment to this country and its monarchy.
It is precisely because of these qualities, because Phan is such a gentle giant of a man in every sense of the word, that Vitthaya Vejjajiva decided to put pen to paper. He also wanted the book to be a tribute to its subject on the occasion of Phan’s recent birthday, when he turned 90.
Vitthaya read up on the social and historical background to his subject’s life, as well as interviewing those close to Phan who come from very different walks of life; sources included Siddhi Savetsila, Pong Sarasin, Thanpuying Wiwan Sreshthaputra, Sindhu Sornsongkram, Dr Sumet Tantivejkul and Dr Tej Bunnag. Vitthaya said his recent discovery of the benefits of Google made the writing process a lot less painful.
In a nutshell, during his seven decades of service to this country Phan led the civil servants working at the Secretariat to the Prime Minister and subsequently held the positions of permanent secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Thai ambassador to Germany and to the UK, and secretary-general of Asean.
All these accomplishments from someone who, back when he was a boy, considered himself rather mediocre, being neither particularly brainy nor particularly athletic.
The author has traced the growth of this outstanding personality from his childhood, through the various shifts in his career up to his present-day roles with the Thai Red Cross Society and the World Fellowship of Buddhists.
In his Foreword, the author referred to what is considered the greatest biography ever written, James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle credited the book’s significance to Boswell’s having “the mind to discern excellence and a heart to appreciate it…” The author makes much of his subject’s “excellence”, in every sense of the word, and attempts through this biography to reflect this quality.
To get a better picture of his subject, the author spoke to many people — friends, relatives and peers, as well as talking to Phan himself — and this is what gives the book much of its flavour. Vitthaya’s style of writing is uncomplicated and easy to read, much like listening to someone telling you a story. His narrative is interspersed with quotes from Phan himself, as well as by black-and-white photographs from Phan’s album, showing the tall and dashing young man as a junior diplomat who was known as “the Thai Gregory Peck” to female students at Chulalongkorn University where he was a guest lecturer. If one had any complaint about this book, it would be that captions should have been supplied to explain the images used and better satisfy readers’ curiosity.
One of the most exciting chapters is the one that relates his experiences as a member of Seri Thai, the Free Thai Movement, during World War II, having been recruited while he was working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He had to resign from the ministry in order to attend intensive training which began at Ban Maliwan (now the Bangkok office of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation) where his main task was decoding Japanese messages. There he met his “buddy”, Lucky Wasiksiri, and the pair were eventually taken aboard a Customs boat and transported down the Chao Phraya River to a designated pick-up point just off Koh Samet, where they were picked up by a seaplane at night from seas he remembers as being especially choppy. The pair were flown to Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) where they were given the pseudonyms In Varaporn and Chan Phongsri (like the first names of the original Siamese twins, In and Chan) before travelling onwards to Washington DC to join Thai Ambassador MR Seni Pramoj, head of Seri Thai.
Since Phan spent much of his life overseas, both for his studies and later on as a diplomat, the book refers to major world events, both in Thailand and abroad, during those periods of his life. By so doing, Vitthaya not only provides insights into his subject, but also into the historical and social context of his life, making for some very interesting reading. The book, as Vitthaya puts it, traces Phan’s life “from the time when he still used slate boards till the time of the computer tablet”.
Another chapter that cannot help but make you smile is the one that recounts his courtship with ML Hiranyika Laddawan, then a second-year student at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science. She had opted to approach Phan in his offices at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rather than confront a teacher who had given her very low marks, because Phan was a friend of her elder brother, ML Thavisan Laddawan. The stratagem worked because Phan used his tact to convince the teacher, a colleague of his at the ministry, not to fail the young student.
The pair continued to phone each other, and then correspond by letter after Phan was posted to Cairo, with friends of his helping to push the two together through chaperoned outings. The relationship was sealed when Phan presented ML Hiranyika with a small print of an oil painting entitled The Broken Pitcher by French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze. It was a picture he treasured from his days of studying art history at Oberlin College in Ohio. And it was a postcard bearing this very image that the publishers of his biography used for a memento which was presented to all those attending the recent book launch.
Phan Pheua Phandin is on sale at local book shops for 350 baht.
