C A R M A G E D D O N
"welcome to Bangkok 1996 - city of ten million people, three million vehicles and an estimated four hundred and fifty new vehicles on the road every day."
" The automobile reigns supreme, devouring all in its path, clogging the city's once serene arteries, substituting the air we breathe for toxic, cancer-inducing gases and dictating the pace of life through auto-fetishists and car-cult junkies, trapped in one-sided love affairs with their BENZine-burning techno-status-symbols and destined to die behind the wheels of their steel-boxed-suitors, vital fluids amalgamating in pools of oily-red liquid-life under violent impromptu street-sculptures of dying screams, crushed metal and RIPped flesh, eerily lit by the flashing red seen-it-all-before roof-top eyes of curb-crawling corpse-collectors' vans-cum-highway-hyenas, grinning radiator grills mocking the efforts of rescue workers as they cut through satiated cabins of twisted metal to reach the dead and the dying. "
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"Past midnight under flyover, chain-smoking, keep-the-mosquitos-at-bay;
Ruam Katanyu pick-up bursts into life and takes off. Jump in the back, cameras smacking and race into light-swallowing fumes. Minutes later, stand around motorcyclist, face down after misjudging a gap in traffic - No-one does anything. Just stare and smoke cigarettes. Tell them he's not dead. "No - Dead already." Finally convince them to take a look at him so they roll him over like a steak and his chest starts heaving, pumping blood out of his mouth. "Not dead yet!" and they bundle him into the back of the pick-up and pull out slowly, expecting him to die soon anyway. Blood covers the road like some experimental canvas. It will be gone by day-break, flakes of tell-tale red hiding in the tyre treads of passing motorists' vehicles en-route to their own unchartered rendezvous. " |