Multitalented Suprana keeps records

By Dewi Anggraeni

JAKARTA (JP): Jaya Suprana, a local multitalented personality, is happy. He has just recorded another entry in Indonesian Museum of Records (MURI), an organization he founded on Jan. 27, 1990, in Semarang.

Like other entries in MURI, this one is unique and the first of its kind: the most prolific and most published letter writer in The Jakarta Post, Indonesia's main English language daily.

Suprana looked completely at home at the private function in the Grand Mahakam Hotel in Kebayoran Baru, Jakarta, on Aug. 22, where he was going to confer a MURI Award on Gandhi Sukardi, the proud record breaker.

Suprana is not a stranger to being the center of attention. Apart from being the founder and convenor of MURI, he is well known for his talk show on private television station TPI, where he once conducted a candid and entertaining interview with President Abdurrahman Wahid. He is also an accomplished pianist, cartoonist, columnist, author and the chief commissioner of his family business, Jamu Cap Jago (medical herbs with the trademark of Jago, or Rooster).

It appears that while he has voluntarily chosen a life without offspring, he is very productive in other areas. For a perfectionist, this is astounding.

He is so scrupulous about perfection that he became involved in a bizarre situation, where he and the then letters editor of the Kompas daily were locked in an exercise of correcting and counter-correcting an article he had written. Ironically the article was about serious accidents caused by fatal errors. To his dismay he found errors in it resulting from the editing staff's corrections, which he deemed fatal in themselves. When he told the letters editor about the mistakes, the editor asked him to write a letter to rectify the situation. When the letter was published, Suprana found that again, the staff had made mistakes in editing it. This time he called Jacob Oetama, then editor in chief, who offered to personally guarantee that the next letter he wrote about the article would appear unedited in the letters column of the paper.

The editor in chief kept his promise, but, unfortunately, for months following that incident the paper contained a lot of mistakes because the copy editors were too scared to correct anything, or so Suprana says.

The secret of his productivity despite his perfectionism, it seems, is his agility of spirit, and his irrepressible creativity. For example, instead of dwelling on his irritation at the letter episode, Suprana not only saw the funny side of it, he also became inspired to compile a record of famous, or infamous, for that matter, mistakes and errors from around the world, which he later published, titled Kaleidoskopi Kelirumologi (roughly translatable to Kaleidoscope of Errata).

Being childless does not mean he leads a life without children. Apart from having nephews and nieces, Suprana founded an orphanage in his hometown, Semarang, called Rotary Suprana. When he inherited land from his mother, he decided to use it to build a dormitory for orphans, which he runs in cooperation with the Rotary Club.

Suprana sees overpopulation as a major problem in Indonesia, so his contribution to the problem is not to have any. Surely that is a drastic solution?

"Not at all," he said, "in many countries it is quite common for couples to opt for childlessness."

Focus should be shifted, according to Suprana, to ways of educating children, many of whom are having difficulties continuing their schooling.

"I can speak from experience," Suprana continued, "the most expensive component of running the orphanage is in educating them. Feeding them is cheap by comparison."

Was the decision not to have children supported by his wife? "Of course!" he laughed, "You know what a wife can do to sabotage the decision if made unilaterally! She could puncture the condom, become deliberately confused about the dates, forget her pills, the possibilities are limitless."

Did he encounter opposition from the extended family? "My mother was opposed to it, but my father supported us. On my wife's side, her mother supported our decision but her father was dead against it. But at the end of the day, it was our choice, our life."

Mobility is also a major aspect of his life. While he resides in Semarang, home, according to Suprana, is in his heart. This is because he travels so much. "When I wake up in the morning, I have to stop and think, where am I today? For instance, this morning I woke up in Jakarta, other days I may be in Surabaya, Solo (Surakarta), Bali, or some other place."

Suprana has been mobile since he was in secondary school. He went to Germany, ostensibly to go to school there, but in reality, he openly admits, it was to be with the love of his life, Julia, now his wife. Nonetheless, he did finish secondary school in Germany, continued his education at the Academy of Fine Arts, and then studied management as well.

When asked how he was able to be so many things all at once, Suprana confided to the Post that he concentrated on one thing at a time. "When I am doing something, such as talking to you now, I only think of this interview. Nothing else."

Suprana was driven to found MURI because he realized that there were so many things in Indonesia that Britain's highly respected The Guinness Book of Records simply was unable to detect, let alone include. Entries such as kuda lumping, the smallest kris in the world, the smallest ketupat (rice cake) in the world, were not able to be accommodated by The Guinness Book of Records but are certainly valuable entries in MURI.

When the idea of MURI was mooted he received support and encouragement from a number of people, including some high- ranking officials.

Suprana's perfectionism stretches to the notion of satisfaction. When asked what gives him the greatest satisfaction, he is momentarily speechless.

In his judgment, satisfaction can only be achieved with perfection. When pressed, he admits that he has not achieved it. "I am grateful for the opportunity to have what I have and to have done what I have done, but I have not reached perfection. The highest perfection is death. In fact, that is what I have been waiting for. Death is the only certain and most important thing," he said without hesitation. In the meantime, he keeps moving. He never stops, working and creating.

Asked whom he admires most in life, he says, "I used to admire certain people, but then I realized that everybody had particular admirable qualities, and equally, I came to see that nobody was perfect. Now I just admire certain qualities in every person I know."

With such an encompassing image he projects publicly, a great part of which is saturated with humor, Jaya Suprana is still an enigma. It is fair to say that there is a lot more to Suprana than meets the eye, and boy, that is no mean feat.