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.