To read is to see the unseen
Ida Aroonwongse's deep literary upbringing has made this avid reader and writer the beacon of changing the world through words
STORY BY VASANA CHINVARAKORN, PHOTO BY MUKHOM WONGTHES
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"Such a dilemma [between a writer's
subjectivity and an academic's objectivity]prompts the need to open up a space, somewhere between the academia and the common sense, between knowledge and feeling, and between being an academic journal and an inspirational magazine (or even between scholarly ambition of men and excessive emotion of women venting in their own rooms!).
"The space of Aan [Read Journal] is thus the space of criticism where footnotes may not be as valuable as courage to express voices, prejudices, standpoints, and even humour - bitter or not. It is also a space of criticism that is subject to accountability and argumentation, not allowing any 'judgement of taste' monopoly by seniority or academic credentials. All these must be based on a sense of responsibility and thoroughness in producing each piece in a scholarly way. Above all, the critiques must not be blind to the cultural politics that unfold around the realm of reading, all despite an awareness of limits in society where cultural and political comments are abysmally restrained.
"Aan is thus opened to every reader to work this self-conflicting standard out together, in hoping to create an atmosphere of productive and strong critical culture where the majority commoners are included.
"Simply put, scholarly content with a common sense."
Ida Aroonwongse,
The Burden of Reading - The Pursuit of the Read Journal |
Her youthful, earnest face is such a beguiling face of innocence. At 34, Ida Aroonwongse recently took the helm of a serious, semi-scholarly quarterly titled Aan (Read Journal), the newest on the (small) literary block of Thailand. The cover of the inaugural issue is aptly symbolic of Ida - a starkly white A4 size page with few, scattered typefaces in grey and orange. More, it is embossed rather boldly in white with an illustration supposedly depicting a Thai classic, Thung Maharat (The Field of the Great), by the late Malai Chupinij (1906 to 1963).
"I would have wanted the [white-on-white] embossment to be a little more raised," said Ida, peering at the cover. "Our artwork designer, Khun Pracha Suveeranont, has spent over a month getting to know my thoughts and personality, what I want and how I want it to be. He has his principle like the former generations of bookmakers: The personality of the editor must be reflected in [the look of] his or her book. It is his code of conduct, that very strictly, the content and the design must reflect each other."
It seems Pracha, widely respected as one of Thailand's top graphic designers, is intuitively right. There is a lot underneath the whitish surface and not-so-flashy layout - the seeming blankness is a shrewd cloak of hard-hitting messages. A daring play on what appears to be still, straightforward.
Scanning the list of columnists and contributors, it is no exaggeration to say Aan is the hub du jour of the country's foremost intellectuals (especially those on the left wing of the ideological spectrum). The first issue's cover story has critic Chusak Pattarakulwanich re-read Thung Maharaj (how amazingly similar is Malai's story of a struggle by farmers to save their homeland during the last years of King Rama V's reign to the contemporary fight of their descendants).
The dean of Chiang Mai University's law faculty Somchai Preechasilpakul contributes a couple of tongue-in-cheek revised versions of Aesop's fables. Then there's this spicy "misread" of Rama V's travel memoirs, Klai Ban, by satirist Mukhom Wongthes, which will shed light into the human(e) side of our much-revered monarch. In between, avant-garde critic Adadol Ingkhawanich decodes how the subconscious psyche of the masses has been portrayed in the nine short films sponsored by the government, as part of the celebration of His Majesty's 80th birthday jubilee last year.
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| The book reflects its maker, Ida Aroonwongse, editor of the new-literary-kid-on-the-block `Aan' (Read Journal). She's a mix of youthful idealism and rebellious irreverence. "`Aan' may feel scholarly but we would like to imply a certain cheekiness; we want to raise some pertinent questions. We aim to look at the discourse behind the contemporary issues. We would like to tear down any illusions that may persist [in society]." |
Sounds like a mix of piquant recipes? The axiom "Never judge a book by its cover" certainly applies well to Aan.
"The magazine's logo incorporates the sign of a computer's power button," Ida answered to a comment that compared it to the middle finger. "One could interpret the sign in so many ways. The book may feel scholarly but we would like to imply a certain cheekiness; we want to raise some pertinent questions.
"The term 'reading' has a double meaning - to read the literal texts and to decipher the implied meanings. We aim to look at the discourse behind the contemporary issues. We would like to tear down any illusions that may persist [in society]."
Ida's upbringing, which was rather bookish in nature, makes her the ideal editor of this out-of-the-norm journal. But that is not the only reason. For a full 10 years, as a member of a small non-government organisation called Alternative Energy Project for Sustainability (AEPS), Ida was heavily involved in three different grassroots movements nationwide. Each has provided her a unique window into the foibles of Thai politics and collusion between business and bureaucracy, from the fight against the nuclear research reactor project in Ongkharak, Nakhon Nayok, to a petition for justice on behalf of the victims of the Cobalt leakage and last but not least, a remarkable struggle by the locals of Prachuap Khiri Khan, which successfully halted two coal-fired power plant projects.
Despite her young age and demure appearance, Ida's (unofficial) CV looks pretty fearsome. It is also an ironic far-flung from the complacency of her childhood days.
An avid reader since the age of five - Ida's mother made her read aloud columns in the Thai Rath newspaper to her every evening - she says she has been a "model child", of sorts. Her school report cards were always full of teachers' compliments. The young Ida was always chosen as the head of her classmates. Her natural hunger for books prompted her to read any scraps of texts around the house. Limited resources at home though made the curious girl willing to read and re-read her small collection of books, usually translated children's stories from foreign languages, and even her elder brother's school textbooks.
"I could recite certain passages by heart," Ida said in a matter-of-fact tone. "I always read the series of Thai language textbooks, [entitled] Mani-Mana, two years ahead [of time]. It is the very first set of books about Thai characters that I was exposed to. They taught us a certain dogma of how to be a good child, to be loyal to the nation, religion and the monarchy. One example of a good person [espoused in the books] was to become a government representative who ran the district agricultural office.
"My deepest wish is to go back and re-read every single book at my house before I die - to see how much I have changed over the years. But I will never read Mani-Mana books again."
In her teenage years, Ida moved on to another genre of books - books that inspired or were about the popular uprising of the mid-'70s. Curiously, one of the titles she picked up had been around since she was little, but abhorred: Pi-sart (The Evil) by Seni Saowaphong. Ida said her mother, whose relatives were active in the historic October movement, had the political novel nicely wrapped and put on the family's bookshelves. Mistaking it for a yarn of ghost stories, it was the only book in the house, Ida says, she never had the urge to pursue until much later.
But Pi-sart and other similar works Ida discovered at her high school's library changed her world view, and began the first waves of disillusionment. Inspired by the sacrifices of Khon Duen Tula (the October Generation), in their challenging of the military dictatorship, she sought to enrol in Thammasat University, where the majority of her heroes had studied.
But fate dictated otherwise. Despite choosing only one seat at Chulalongkorn University (as a way to placate her parents), and the rest at Thammasat, Ida unexpectedly passed the entrance exam to the e'litist faculty of arts of Chulalongkorn University. She said she cried vehemently upon learning of the result.
The young woman would spend the following four years at Thammasat anyhow, showing up at her school only for the final exams. Years later, an old friend recalled spotting Ida among the Pak Moon protesters in front of the World Bank's country office while she was on her way to class. It was an indelible image, says the friend, to see Ida in her plain white blouse, a sort of cloth band around her forehead, sitting underneath the scorching sun along with several brown-faced Isan villagers ...
Ida would soon become disillusioned. But not by the common folk, she says. Upon learning that her former heroes and heroines, who once stood up to the powers that be, have become eager players in the stock market, in the world of profit and power at all cost they themselves once condemned, Ida's faith was shattered. The Black May uprising in 1992 was the breaking straw. Even after all of the lives that had been lost, maimed and thwarted, at the end of the day, the real winners have always been the ruling classes who negotiated among themselves, she says.
"I realised that there are so many things in politics that we do not know, that we will never have an actual say," Ida reminisced.
"People who were killed or injured were commoners. They were willing to sacrifice their lives even though they had to struggle to feed themselves from one day to the next. From that point on I concluded that I would never push for any big changes, changes that would come at the expense of others."
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| The inaugural meeting of Thailand's first Writers' Club in 1950, a place for debate and intellectual exchange at a time of military dictatorship. |
For a long while, Ida became, acted deliberately like, an angry young woman. After the Black May experience, she felt everything was so meaningless and almost dropped out of Chula. Thanks to her close friend, Mukhom, who introduced her to one understanding philosophy professor, Ida stuck it out until she graduated. Still, against her parents' wishes she drifted from one job to the next, lasting from four hours to a little more than a year.
When Phra Paisan Visalo and his associates set up a small think-tank to study the potential problems of nuclear energy in Thailand, which has since evolved into the Alternative Energy Project for Sustainability (AEPS), Ida was asked if she would like to join.
Initially reticent, she says she would only contribute her proficiency in English to help in translating foreign documents, but not to participate in any political way.
Little did she realise that her faith in idealism would slowly be nurtured back. Through AEPS, Ida says she has got to know some former members of the October generation, people like her former head Watcharee Paoluengthong and the late Wanida Tantiwittayapitak, who still live modestly and work for the poor as they did years ago.
At AEPS, Ida also had the chance to take "revenge" on some of the October heroes-turned-ideological traitors. Due to their oratory and mobilising skills, a few have been recruited to work on publicity stunts for several mega-projects, including the coal-fired power plant schemes in the Bo Nok and Ban Krud sub-districts of Prachuap Khiri Khan. They would discover that their rhetoric was in no way comparable to the rural people's "direct" reminder of their past commitments.
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| A daring, quiet quarterly: Despite its rather plain appearance, `Aan' has attracted a number of Thailand's foremost writers and critics. |
"It was the Prachuap folk who took revenge for me," a light smile appeared on Ida's lips. "I once came across one [of the October people]; I felt so mad but I could do nothing except stare at him. Along came phi Krarok [a villager]. Upon learning what had happened, she immediately walked over to him and shouted some expletives, followed by the name he once adopted while working for the Communist Party of Thailand. It was such simple creativity but something I couldn't do myself. Eventually, all of those public relation teams had to flee the area."
Again, the campaigns in Prachuap Khiri Khan have taught Ida about another way of reading.
"At the time, I worked more like a secretary to the villagers. I'd search for any documents that might be useful for them. I translated the EIA [Environmental Impact Assessment] reports, which were either in English or had technical terminology that needed to be put into layman's terms. Even then, I couldn't tell if the content was accurate or not. The villagers were the ones who pointed out the glaring mistakes there, like the omission of the coral reefs.
"It was the first time I witnessed two different forms of knowledge - one on the huge tome of papers and the other that comes from the experiences of real people."
One irony of all these years was that despite her first love of letters - she continued to do some translation and editing work in the very little free time she had - Ida deliberately suppressed her other, literary, side. Only one or two villagers she worked with were allowed to read her written work, which included translations of Arundhati Roy's essays chastising the Indian government's nuclear testing and the Narmada dam project.
"I think books are for city people, something that would be considered trivial in the real world of villagers. How can I read [Virginia Woolf's] Mrs Dalloway and protest at the same time?" Ida gave her rare mischievous laugh.
"I'd always feel guilty. It has been a dilemma for me. I grew up with books. I love reading. But I feel they don't respond to the social problems I wanted to resolve. In my teenage years, I dreamed of writing books that would change the world. But I have become aware that books in themselves can only shape people's thinking, and it will take a long time, ages, to eventually transform the world. How many writers have striven to do that? Tolstoy did it. So did Gorky. And who am I?"
Due to health and financial reasons, Ida had to suspend her work at AEPS. At present, besides editing Aan and some pocketbooks, which will come under the journal's label, she also works on her memoir of the time she spent in Prachuap. "It is like an unwritten obligation between me and the people there," Ida noted. "It would be a challenge for me to write as if the villagers said it themselves, a tribute to the real owners of the story."
But isn't her very present work, editing rather esoteric, high-brow critiques a little too detached from the earthly chaos? Ida replies that the on-going turmoil, with the rampant absurdity of political blurriness, is the best time to consume such critical works.
"Now we could hear the playing of [nationalistic song] Rao Su with [leftist] Saeng Dao Haeng Sattha on the same stage. Things that wouldn't have co-existed together, the ultra-right wing is brushing side by side with the radical left leaning. It might work for the better - everything that we used to cherish now just melts into thin air.
"So this might be the prime time for some quiet soul searching, to delve into something on a deeper level, leaving the outside world reel in its insanity.
"Reading requires people to be slower, to be still. It could shape, mould, a person's outlook. I believe that some serious readers still exist in this society. I am aware that most Thai people have not been reared in the reading culture. But there are those in the cities, the so-called intellectuals, who could exert influence in the future of the country. If there is no effort to develop the quality of this group, they might do something that will affect the majority of the people."
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