Sujiwo Tejo: Sense from a 'crazy' puppeteer

Sujiwo Tejo: Sense from a 'crazy' puppeteer

Lie Hua, Contributor, Jakarta

Dalang Edan (Crazy Puppeteer); By Ki H. Sujiwo Tejo;
Aksara Karunia, 2002; xxi + 488 pp; Rp 50,000

Sujiwo Tejo is well-known to fans of shadow puppet
performances. A young puppet master, he shares with the public
his understanding of contemporary events in Indonesia as viewed
through his eyes as a puppeteer.

The world of the shadow puppet play is an invented cosmos in
which our real world is reflected. Through this reflection, we
can see ourselves better. It is a mirror of our own lives, and at
the same time an instrument to enhance our spiritual well-being.

Sujiwo Tejo attempts to look through the looking-glass of
shadow puppetry at contemporary events in this country.
Positioning himself as a puppeteer, he can easily comment on
events that form the mosaic of contemporary Indonesian society in
the same way that a shadow puppet master plays the puppets and
comments on events involving the characters represented by these
puppets.

Just like watching the performance of a shadow puppet play, in
which you will be spiritually purified and enhanced after
experiencing something like the catharsis of Western plays,
reading this book opens your eyes wider about yourself and your
society.

We seem to see ourselves stark naked before the spotlight of
our puppet master, Sujiwo Tejo, and realize our shortcomings as
individuals who make up Indonesian society today.

Sujiwo exposes our blatant human hypocrisy, and the examples
of cravenness that fill our lives. We have political leaders that
act more like animals than human beings. We have a lot of beings
with human faces but who commit bestial acts. For example, you
will be punished for killing legally protected animals. However,
this punishment is imposed on you not because animals have legal
rights, but because killing these animals will disturb the
ecosystem and human beings will suffer from the impact.

While we uphold democracy and believe that all are equal, we
have simply shifted from acknowledging the authority of a king to
that of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) as the holder of
people's sovereignty, or the president, or still, the ruling
political party.

Democracy, according to Sujiwo, remains second best, in the
absence of the best. He also gives another example of how
officials at the religious affairs office are more interested in
money rather than legalizing a matrimony. It is ironical that
corruption prevails not only in an office dealing with mundane
affairs but also in one taking care of religious affairs. This is
a clear example of human hypocrisy.

Another lucid example of human hypocrisy is given when he
comments on how the public can be captivated by inanities, and
are therefore fond of talking about the high fees demanded by top
artists and world-class soccer players.

Reports about a particular actress and her fat pay packet or a
soccer player who has been transferred from one club to another
for a staggering amount of money will spread quickly as
interesting gossip. We feast on such tantalizing tidbits of
worthless information, yet news of legislators' demands in a
certain regency in East Java for a rise in their salary from Rp
2.3 million to Rp 4 million in December 2002 caused enormous
controversy.

We easily sympathize with new university graduates going from
one office to another for a job. We praise them for their
perseverance. However, we seemed to have lost this sympathy when
former minister of justice Muladi persisted in his efforts to get
the position of chief justice. We do not consider his effort a
manifestation of his perseverance. We have our double standards,
although we may not realize it because of our perception of
public dedication in the case of Muladi.

When touching on former president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid
and his alleged involvement in the abuse of funds belonging to
the State Logistics Agency (Bulog), Sujiwo says that it is only
out of hypocrisy that the public does not want to acknowledge
that a president needs a lot of money to handle things. And,
especially in the case of Gus Dur, he needed money to face his
enemies, who, owing to their past corruption, had more money than
the president.

The book is interesting to read because Sujiwo's comments, as
a puppeteer, on contemporary events in Indonesia are also given
in the context of philosophical enlightenment through easily
digested examples. His language is lively although he introduces
a number of new words to enrich the vocabulary of the Indonesian
language. Luckily, a glossary for them is also provided.

It must be said that the book reads like James Joyce's
Ulysses, as the flow of thought moves freely from beginning to
end.