The Minfong Ho Collection by Minfong Ho

Author:Minfong Ho [Minfong Ho]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789814351904
Google: jduIAAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 12180018
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish Editions
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Eleven

The next morning, Ned took Jinda with him to Thammasart University. At first Jinda felt rather intimidated. The campus teemed with students, all clutching thick books and hurrying from building to tall building. Many of them were in student uniform, wearing starched white shirts, and black trousers or skirts. What impressed Jinda most were the tiny steel buttons and shiny belt buckles each student had, embossed with — Ned explained laughingly — the department they were in. ‘Pure snob appeal,’ he said, apparently by way of explaining too, why he and most of his friends pointedly rejected their uniform, and instead wore the dark blue workshirt and baggy trousers that farmers wore in the village. Not a single girl, however, wore a sarong, and Jinda felt very old-fashioned and out-of-place in hers.

In Ned’s classes, even though her sarong was hidden under the desk, she felt self-conscious again. She was the only one in the classroom who did not have a pen and notebook in front of her, and who wasn’t busily scribbling down notes as the professor lectured. Even if I had ten pens, Jinda thought wryly, I wouldn’t be writing anything down, since I can’t understand a thing he’s saying. He strings those long words together as quickly as cousin Mali strings her garlands of jasmine buds!

A small chubby man with a moustache, the lecturer brandished a piece of chalk at his class and talked, as far as Jinda could make out, about turning society upside down. ‘He’s just returned from America,’ Ned whispered to Jinda as the professor paused for breath. ‘He’s read Marx, Lenin and all of Mao, and joined massive anti-war demonstrations in Washington: a real progressive!’

Jinda nodded, but she was not impressed. What did any of that have to do with the rent issue back in little Maekung? Why did he talk so much of fighting and violence, when he looked as if he’d cringe at any village tough waving a broken beer bottle? Jinda shook her head. City life was a vast, confusing web. It was no use trying to understand it.

After class, Ned led her over to a group of students standing in the corridor, and introduced her as Inthorn Boonrueng’s daughter. ‘You know, Inthorn of the rent resistance movement,’ he added.

This seemed to excite the students. They clustered around her, and asked breathless, complicated questions about landholdings, about the farmers’ resistance movement, about her own political position. Bewildered, Jinda backed away. ‘Hold on,’ Ned said, waving aside their barrage of questions. ‘Right now we’ve got more important concerns than mere politics. Jinda and I are going to have lunch. Anyone want to join us?’

‘This will give you a chance to meet some of the people you’ll be working with on the land reform rally,’ Ned told Jinda quietly as he steered her away. ‘Some of them are textbook radicals — they talk progressive, but they haven’t set foot outside the classroom — but don’t worry, they all mean well.’

Jinda glanced back at the students following her, chattering and hugging their books to them.

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