Adventurous Investors
The news report in The Jakarta Post dated June 14, 1995, Woman Wanted for Fraud -- that a woman named Lily had successfully, and perhaps gently, relieved "investors" of Rp 50 billion, but had been accused of fraud -- was censorious and judgmental.
Lily, whose name is strongly suggestive, evocative of fragrance and romance, has only shown what the spirit of enterprise, totally uninhibited, can accomplish. With exquisite daring and dedication she has pushed back the frontiers of market forces and in the process set a new bench mark, worthy of the Guinness Book of Records. Rp 50 billion changed hands without the batting an eyelid. She emerges as a business woman, albeit a roller-coaster type, and like any other business person, is not insured against failure. So, she asks: "Is failure a fraud?"
What Lily has achieved is actually great. She has shown that women, ostensibly striving for equality with men, do, indeed, aim to excel men and even succeed, as Lily had.
Lily is quite modern. She is aware that tricking people out of their monies is a growing industry and was instinctively sure that women have the talents and credentials needed to shine. They have smoothness. Even a die-hard chauvinist would agree that smoothness is utterly feminine; indeed, feminine at its best. An earning asset: it lulls, distracts, secures obedience and, not least, makes complaints, especially from men who are drawn by women like moths to the flames, look silly, despicable and, of course, unchivalrous.
Some may say that con men are also smooth. Maybe; but they don't have the allure. So, smoothness, formidable as it is, only becomes unbeatable when it teams up with lure. Luring, a natural pursuit of women, gives the go to feminine powers. Rp 50 billion, swept up in a jiffy, is a glowing tribute to feminine power. It is something more than alluring. Actually, terrifying. Against guns we have bullet-proof vests; against feminine allure, what do we have?
Next, where feminine power has worked or wrecked, even the police are foxed. The Jakarta police have no clues and Lily's mystique has so deepened, that the police have confessed that they are in the dark. Yes, it is hard to figure out whether the surge of Rp 50 billion revolved around amorous peccadilloes or around done-deals, gone awry only in hind-sight.
Significantly, your report is silent about the gender of the investors, though diamonds have been mentioned casually, as if the encounters were Lily against women. But this is a red herring. Reading between the lines and from the weight of pulsating reticence in the report, one could fairly guess that the investors were men, alas, hungry men, who have been defeated but, thanks to Lily, not destroyed. They can still treasure and savor every moment of the rhapsodic give and take and yin and yang, and thus reminisce about the done deals with saucy Lily. At least, Lily can't boast that she turned these hungry men into burn-outs.
Lastly, Lily has a forceful message for mankind: Eves reign supreme, always. Men are lucky that Eves don't keep proving their supremacy, at least not too often, anyway.
G.S.EDWIN
Gandaria
South Jakarta