May 1998. Things were hopeful, things were tense. The Asian economic crisis had shattered the Indonesian economy and the capital was a tinderbox. Mass unemployment, student democracy movements, riots, strikes, police violence – you name it, Jakarta had it. Everyone thought Suharto’s regime had to go, but still he hung on, picking his way through the minefield of an IMF austerity program.

Then one evening we tried to catch a taxi. The simplest thing, yet to our amazement none would stop: they were all heading for petrol stations to get the last drops before the government, under the IMF lash, slashed subsidies. Buses were doing the same. Everybody was looking for the same thing, but some had an easier time getting it.

Rich people sent their drivers to join the queues; then the drivers headed home to empty the tanks before returning to queues again. Meanwhile working class people had to trudge home on foot. Looking helplessly at this orgy of greed, the poorer neighbourhoods seethed with resentment. We should know, we were forced to walk through them for miles.

On 14 May the morning papers told me snipers had shot demonstrating students at the Trisakti campus in West Jakarta. I found a taxi and headed over there, telling the driver I was going to the nearby Citraland hotel and shopping mall – he might have been scared of Trisakti. The police were nowhere to be seen; they feared the people’s anger.

At the university a rally was underway. For the moment it was peaceful. Megawati arrived, as did rival democracy figure Amien Rais. So did the poet Rendra, who had written verses for the occasion.

Speakers appealed for non-violence, but it was too late for that. Militant students were already drifting into the streets, where they mingled with neighbourhood poor. Student officials tried to in vain to stop them. Someone pulled concrete planter boxes into the road and blocked traffic; someone else set a truck on fire. Youths in the street pointed to it and called to me: Berita hangat! Hot news.

I ran into friends from the Women’s Solidarity NGO, and we grabbed some lunch from the student canteen while watching the restless crowds in the streets. They said, ‘This anger has been buried in their hearts for a long time.’

Police formed up some distance away, but when they showed no signs of moving, I went out to talk to people in the street. One young guy pointed to the fat, vulgar tower of the Citraland hotel across the road, attached to a shopping mall that had slammed its doors shut. ‘Later we’ll burn that down,’ he said, pulling at the sides of his eyes to signify the owner was Chinese. ‘Don’t be racist’, I argued with a boldness I didn’t feel. ‘Suharto’s the problem, and he’s not Chinese.’

To my amazement the young man blinked and nodded OK; and I felt like I’d accomplished something. A drop in the ocean. But my drop.

Suddenly the crowd started to run. My head spinning, I dashed with them back onto the campus. Then looking around, I realised there was no danger yet. I traded glances with the woman next to me. Kita panik, I said. We panicked. She nodded and we laughed.

But soon it was on. The demonstrators charged, throwing rocks, in a display of mad courage. The police shot tear gas, scary yet oddly nostalgic; it was the first time I’d smelt that raw, pungent aroma since Berkeley in the sixties. I was inside the now-locked campus gates, watching, and feeling safe – until a gas grenade flew right into the university grounds, and we were all running again, helter-skelter, choking and looking for water.

Barging into a building, dashing up the stairs looking for water, I met a lecturer. As we coughed together, she told me her son had lost his job in the economic upheavals, and she might be next. Eventually we ventured cautiously out; she led to me a side gate out of the campus and together we crossed the pedestrian bridge over the freeway to the Citraland side. A cop looked suspiciously at my camera. I pretended to only speak English. ‘Thank you very much’, I said inconsequentially. ‘Thank-you’ he mumbled back, not sure what to do except let me pass.

Traffic was jammed tight. A police radio squawked that ‘the mobile brigade armoured vehicles are caught in traffic’. Looking down from the bridge, sure enough I saw them, powerless for once. Hah.

All the streets were just as jammed. There was nothing for it but to walk out of the riot zone. I plodded along in the hot, smoggy afternoon. Along the way a street vendor glanced at me, and back at where I’d come from. Ramai, pak? (Hectic over there?) Ramai, I replied. We laughed. It was going to get a lot more hectic, and within a short time Suharto would be history.