It’s a good thing Thais are such a religious lot. With the hundreds of wats and thousands of shrines in Bangkok alone, if the populace wasn’t into praying at the drop of the hat there’d be a lot of wasted real estate in Thailand’s capital city. Unlike in America where the norm is a visit to church on Sunday and perhaps on the occasion when something extremely drastic is happening in your life, in Thailand reverence being shown is a daily occurrence. In fact it’s a multiple times a day occurrence.

Most homes have a shrine or two that require tending to, both indoors and outside. And you can not really expect to be successful at business if there is no shrine there too to be properly cared for in the morning and properly prayed at throughout the day. With temples and shrines more prevalent than 7/11s, Bangkok has a shrine or wat on every block with almost any deity you can think of given its own place of honor somewhere in the city. Of course the savvy Bangkokian knows which religious places have the most power and which shrines are the best to take care of the specific human need or desire that is at the forefront of his concerns. At least for that hour. The Buddha may be the ultimate god, but the hundreds of lesser gods Thais have assimilated into their religious views are much better to turn to when your needs fall directly under their sphere of influence.

My friend Noom has an affinity for the elephant god Ganesha. Theirs is an on-going relationship, mutually beneficial in that Noom gives Ganesha the attention he craves and Ganesha in turn gives Noom all of the materialistic things he wants or needs. He has a personal shrine to the god in his loom (okay, he has a few dozen personal Ganesha shrines in his small loom). And he wears a Ganesha amulet around his neck just in case he feels the need for a one on one when a suitable shrine is not handy. That, of course, doesn’t mean should we pass a Ganesha shrine during the day that we can actually just pass it. You don’t snub the gods you love. Not if you are smart. And if you are a smart farang you quickly learn that unless you want to take a religion break, it’s best to walk down Ratchadamri Road on the opposite side of the street from Central World.

Ganesha is a popular god for success in business endeavors. So it makes sense that there is a large shrine honoring the big trunked guy in front of Bangkok’s largest shopping mall. It’s good for business, both for the store owners and locals with their own business needs. Situated in front of the Isetan department store, Ganesha had the large expanse to himself until renovations to the mall required, at a great expense, moving the mall’s other shrine from its corner at the busy Ratchaprasong intersection. Now the two shrines stand side by side. And the upstart deity gets a lot more attention and is the more popular of the two (just never tell Noom that I said that.). Success in business, money, and wealth is all well and good, but when you need the gods to intercede on your behalf what really matters is love.

The Trimurti Shrine, built in 1989, is a replica of the original statue from Ayutthaya featuring a human body with two heads and four arms. The heads are one on top of the other; the lower head has four faces. A Hindu god, Trimurti’s three heads represents the three aspects of God: Brahma (the Source/Creator), Vishnu (the Preserver) and Shiva (the Transformer or Destroyer). Like other shrines in Bangkok, the Trimurti Shrine was built to answer the prayers of people seeking success, prosperity and happiness. But leave it to the gods, somehow the shrine acquired the reputation of granting happiness in romance and is now called the Lovers’ Shrine.

The fact that there is little in Hinduism to back up the Thai version of Trimurti being the god of love doesn’t stop the faithful from flocking to the shrine on most evenings to pray for the man or woman of their dreams in their pursuit of true love. The shrine’s popularity is surprising considering that for the cost of a Singha you can find love nightly just a short Skytrain ride away. As the shrine’s reputation for granting happiness in romance has grown so has the beliefs associated with it. You need nine red joss sticks, a couple of red candles, and nine red roses – 3 roses for each side – as offerings. And currently the word is that Trimurti comes down from the heavens to bless worshippers and fulfill their prayers every Thursday night at 9.30 p.m.

On Thursday evenings, most lovelorn singles wear red when praying at Trimurti’s shrine hoping that they will meet their eternal sweethearts. Many claim Trimurti is especially successful in matching foreign mates with Thai partners, and the shrine is so crowded on Thursday nights by the steady flow of worshipers that the faithful have to wait their turn to offer their prayers.

Both Ganesha’s and Trimurti’s statues are housed in similar white gabled structures; the accessible areas around Ganesha’s shrine are festooned with marigolds and carvings of elephants left by worshipers. Trimurti’s shrine sits in the middle of a placid water feature, the edges of which are lined with single-stem red roses, offerings left behind by the lovelorn that stay fresh throughout the next day thanks to their watery placement. As popular as Trimurti’s shrine is you have to assume those who have worshiped there in the past have been successful in finding love. As for Ganesha, he is at least doing his job for whoever it is that holds the rose concession in the area.

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