Cover image credit istock.com/Matt_Gibson
By Tee Anmai
Loaded with unmilled rice, a six-wheeled truck made a chug-chug sound as it slowly crawled away from auntie’s paddy threshing ground. Braving the scorching mid-day sun and the northeasterly crosswind, it headed from the village towards the city about 30 kilometers away.
A five-year-old boy, skinny and grubby, tightened the rope of his diamond-shaped pakpao kite, before striding barefoot along a rice paddy ridge, into the cloud of dust left by the truck.
At the threshing ground, a pile of unmilled rice reached for the sky. The boy’s father was a strong farmer. He could thresh a whole bundle of rice, sometimes even two at a time. When the rice struck the wooden plate, the sound was so loud that the whole field could hear it.
The boy heard his mother shouting, but he couldn’t catch her words.
Before the cloud of dust settled…
