Erawan Shrine

When I came here, I half expected to see a statue of a 3 headed Elephant. For Erawan is the Thai word of Airavata, the Three Headed Elephant, mount of Indra who is the God of the gods. So I was quite baffling when I saw the four-faced statue of Brahma. I'm not sure why they didn't call this the Brahma temple. (Erawan was born after Brahma cast a hymn on the half-shell of Garuda, but that was the only relation I knew between them) And even stranger, I had been here before. I remembered this place from my last visit to Thailand (which was millennium before). But something had changed, the statue was different. In 2006, in the middle of the night, the statue of Brahma was completely destroyed by a man with mental illness. Later the man was beaten to death by the bystanders (including two street-sweepers). It was a bizarre incident. The one in this photo is the restored statue.