Book on life as lived by the majority<\/p>\n
It's Not An All Night Fair; Pramoedya Ananta Toer;
\nEquinox Publishing, Jakarta-Singapore, 2001; xv+103 pp<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): When Bill Watson first came to Indonesia in 1969
\nto teach English here, he recalls everyone suggesting to him that
\nhe should read Pramoedya Ananta Toer. He would have loved to do
\nso except there was no way of finding anything written by
\nPramoedya at that time.<\/p>\n
Watson was on a British volunteer program and was eager to
\nknow more about this country and its people. One way of doing
\nthis, he thought, was to read local authors writing about
\nthemselves and their society. He searched high and low for books
\nby Pramoedya but the sales staff at bookstores turned away when
\nhe told them what he was looking for.<\/p>\n
Finally he came across the owner of a little bookstore in
\nBandung who took him into a corner and handed him a copy of Bukan
\nPasar Malam (It's Not An All Night Fair), but under the
\ntable.<\/p>\n
The book was published in 1951, in Bahasa Indonesia. Watson
\nwas so happy to have a copy that he learnt the local language and
\nas soon as he could he started to read the book. The story of a
\n25-year-old son who has returned to his village in Central Java
\nto face the illness and death of his father touched him in such a
\nway that he was inspired to share it with all his friends in
\nEngland.<\/p>\n
The following year he began to translate the novella from his
\nlittle house on the slopes of the Tangkuban Prahu in Bandung. Set
\naway from the main road and looking out at the water buffalo
\nplowing the fields, it was easy, recalls Watson, to be
\ntransported by the story's narrator as he makes his way home by
\ntrain from Jakarta to Blora, Central Java, to be at the bedside
\nof his dying father.<\/p>\n
When Watson returned home he enrolled for a masters degree in
\nthe sociology of the Indonesian novel, concentrating on
\nliterature between 1900 and 1955. As he put the last full stop to
\nthe manuscript he felt an intense desire to take it first to
\nPramoedya, the most famous of all Indonesian writers.<\/p>\n
But again all inquiries about Pramoedya's whereabouts were met
\nwith blank stares and an embarrassed silence. Nobody would tell
\nWatson where to find Pramoedya. It was only much later that the
\nworld realized how the author, along with tens of thousands of
\nothers, was detained in 1965, and without trial or a formal
\naccusation sent into internal exile to the remote island of Buru.<\/p>\n
The next 11 years were spent by Pramoedya and the others
\nclearing jungles to find food and shelter on the abandoned
\nisland. Most of them died of starvation, disease or brutality at
\nthe hands of the prison authorities. In the meantime, Watson's
\ntranslation of Bukan Pasar Malam was published in the journal
\nIndonesia in 1973.<\/p>\n
When the translation came out Watson was of course very
\npleased but there was a sense of regret that he could not get it
\nto Pramoedya himself and, second, that it would not have a larger
\ncirculation beyond the circle of specialist readers of the
\njournal. Both problems are now resolved as in the early 1980s
\nafter Pramoedya returned to Jakarta from Buru, Watson visited him
\nwith his daughter and personally gave him a copy of the
\ntranslation.<\/p>\n
Besides, the story has now been reissued by Equinox as part of
\nits Pramoedya signature series which is an effort to search out
\nthe prolific author's earlier works and make them more
\naccessible to the English-speaking community.<\/p>\n
The book was recently released in Jakarta in the presence of
\nPramoedya who pointed out that presidents have come and gone but
\nthe ban slapped on his writings has still not been lifted even
\nthough the 32-year rule of dictator-president Soeharto ended in
\nMay 1998,<\/p>\n
Pramoedya is now able to travel abroad and his books are
\navailable in the country. Pramoedya already has had 30 of his
\nworks translated into over 30 languages.<\/p>\n
The first in the Equinox series is Tales from Djakarta, a
\ncollection of 13 stories written between 1948 and 1956, a period
\nof bitter transition from the revolutionary era to the beginnings
\nof military rule in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Translated by the Nusantara Group of graduate students
\nspecializing in Malay and Indonesian languages and literature at
\nthe University of California, Berkeley, the stories were written
\nnearly four decades ago but reading them now makes one wonder if
\ntime has not stood still all this while? All the human frailties
\nand problems, especially of the poor, that were talked about then
\nremain the same to this day.<\/p>\n
Not An All Night Fair is the second book in the series and
\ncontinues to document life as it is lived by the majority of
\npeople. It also highlights the shattered hopes of the older
\ngeneration that dreamt of a more just existence after the
\ndeparture of the colonialists.<\/p>\n
Instead the house is falling apart in the narration, the head
\nof the family is on his death bed and the protagonist, who is
\nalso the eldest of the next generation, is still unemployed. But
\nbefore going the sick father says that he has led a hard life,
\nperhaps by choice, as he did not want to become a clown,
\njockeying for political power after independence.<\/p>\n
"I didn't want to be an ulama. I wanted to be a nationalist.
\nThat's why I became a teacher. To open the door for the hearts of
\nchildren to go into the garden ... of patriotism. Are you
\nlistening?"<\/p>\n
Hopefully, many more are listening as well. For it is never
\ntoo late to start right now, to try and make that difference.<\/p>\n
-- Mehru Jaffer<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/book-on-life-as-lived-by-the-majority-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }