Hopelessness can be dangerous

As a kid of five years old I stayed with a retired district chief (Asisten Wedana), because my parents lived in a remote village where even water mains and electricity were non-existent. My father, who had put his mind to giving his children the best available education, put my brother and me at his close friend's house in the city of East Java, so that we could enter a Dutch school. My landlord and his wife were childless so they were glad to be surrounded by children and relatives, school-going teenagers and grownups were among them.

This friendly couple treated me as if I were their own son, so I was brought up in the old-fashioned Javanese or Malay language (now Bahasa Indonesia). I even learned the correct/polite Javanese language/dialect. My landlord belonged to the Indonesian nobility, so he had the title Raden in front of his name, Raden Mas is someone of Royal birth, I was told.

At that time, the 1930s, the world depression was in full swing, jobs were scarce, and in a society where able-bodied men were loafing around doing nothing, one could feel the unpleasant, listless daily atmosphere.

One day, at dusk, I heard a commotion, everybody was running about and all the while the womenfolk were crying hysterically and everybody was trying to soothe a young, wild-eyed man with disheveled hair coming out of one of the many rooms. He was the landlady's nephew. At that moment I could only think that some terrible thing must have taken place.

Only when the usual calmness of the household was restored dared I ask one of the maidservants what had actually happened. She whispered to me that the young man had tried to hang himself because he could not find a job, no matter how hard he tried. Apparently hopelessness was the cause of his suicide attempt.

A. DJUANA

Jakarta