Power of the pen gives voice to an ideology of resistance
Power of the pen gives voice to an ideology of resistance
Lie Hua, Contributor, Jakarta
Putu Oka Sukanta's Di Atas Siang, Di Bawah Malam: Sketsa Perempuan & Renungan Seorang Eks-tapol ('Tis Daytime Above, Night Below: Sketch of a Woman & Reflections of an Ex-Political Detainee) is unique in that it contains a novelette, a collection of poems and three letters.
The prefaces by Tinuk Y. Yampolsky and Sitor Situmorang and the epilogue by Myra Diarsi dwell lengthily on the author's person and the bitter experiences that made him the man he is now: Putu Oka is deeply dedicated to human rights empowerment through literature and is an HIV/AIDS activist. Sitor is one of Indonesia's best writers and, like Putu Oka, is also a former political detainee jailed by the New Order regime for alleged involvement in the Sept. 30, 1965 coup attempt blamed on the now defunct Indonesian Communist Party.
The title story, a novelette of almost 100 pages, is about a woman doctor, Niah, and the problems she faces in her effort to help sex workers on Batam Island, located just off Singapore. Poignantly, Putu Oka describes the bitter experiences that the people of this island go through in their desperate endeavor to get rich, even at the expense of their own humanity. The story centers on the plight of sex workers, a group of people that "have ceased to be humans" (p. 10).
Niah runs a program to educate sex workers about safe sex and other sex-related health issues. Niah struggles, often in a state of near despair, to enlighten the sex workers, many of whom only enjoy very limited freedom and have been forced into prostitution to support their families back home. Generally undereducated, they are thus vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases.
Niah is obsessed with helping them, but she has to face the hard reality that for most sex workers, prostitution is the only means for them to survive. In her despair, she becomes acquainted with Asa, a freelance journalist covering women's issues, and someone in which Niah can confide.
Through the conversations between Niah and Asa, Putu Oka dissects prostitution and concludes that it is a social ill caused by a faulty social system and lambastes those engaged in superficially eradicating prostitution: It is often the case that sex workers are nabbed, but not their pimps (p. 89). Putu Oka avers that empowerment is the only way to fight a faulty system.
The novelette makes for good reading, thanks to Putu Oka's eloquent use of colloquial Indonesian and his poetic style, which runs through the story. Readers are thus exposed to the beauty of the Indonesian language, which, in its simplicity, is tapped to the fullest in Putu Oka's powerful poetic expressions.
The second section of the book features poetry, beginning with the long poem, "Poetry from Bali to Hawaii Dropping in at a Prison: A Sketch of the Creative Journey of Putu Oka, a Poet", followed by 39 other poems.
"Poetry from Bali to Hawaii" dwells on what Putu Oka went through before he could finally go abroad. Imprisoned for a decade by the New Order regime, he was deprived of pen and paper, the greatest punishment for a writer. Yet he survived, as he learned "to write poems in the sky with the sound made by the soldiers' boots, or the clouds as rhythm" (p. 106).
During the darkest decade of his life, Putu Oka could only manage to create a single poem. He worked extra hard and uttered this poem, "Who" under his breath to avoid being noticed. The poem may sum up his feelings behind bar: Green/Green/Green/Building a dark shadow//Twinkling stars/Reflect the color of blood//When he passes/It smells of corpses. (pp 107- 8)
Putu Oka conveys his statement about poetry and life through this collection, and ends with: "I gaze at the statue of liberty/Reminding me of poetry, staying in prison (p. 113) How close liberty, poetry and prison are intertwined in the author's life.
The 39 succeeding poems all give voice to the poet's yearning for freedom and human dignity, for example, Los Angeles Hollywood Santa Barbara/I saw a beggar in search of human warmth/amid color-changing leaves/there is also one in the U.S., it turns out// (p. 117).
Putu Oka's life journey is plotted in "Episode", which covers three major episodes in his life: Bali in 1959, when he left his birthplace; Yogyakarta from 1959-63, when he learned much of life's lessons; and Jakarta from 1966-76, when he was incarcerated.
As regards this last period, he writes that the capital was a place where "age never disappears, even in prison/hope challenges like love/are never crushed by power/the poet is crowned by his poetry (p. 143). Clearly, poetry was the key to Putu Oka's survival during his tribulation.
The final part of the book is a collection of three letters to the author's daughter, revealing the hardships he faced as a former political detainee and how he finally won his freedom.
Most importantly, the third letter explains Putu Oka's literary stance: In "Writing is a Struggle for Life", he lashes out at the repression that many writers like him were subjected to and resolves to continue writing in opposition to any form of repression.
As Sitor noted in his preface, Putu Oka possesses an ideology of resistance, which sums up the ideas he expresses in all his writings, literary or otherwise.
The reviewer is an English Literature lecturer at National University in South Jakarta.