Hopelessness can be dangerous

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