The Legend of the Stepchild's Lament

My mother had one simple way to make me obey when I was little. She did not need to hit me, did not need to shout, did not need to confiscate my toys. She only needed to say: “If Mama is gone one day, you will have a stepmother.”

And instantly I fell silent. Strange, indeed. To this day I still remember it. Even though my mother never really threatened me, she said it while laughing. Sometimes when I refused to eat, sometimes when I was too clingy, or started whining for something unnecessary.

But every time those two words appeared, I immediately went quiet. Stepmother. As an Indonesian child in the early 1990s, no combination of words sounded more terrifying than that. Today I realise that fear did not appear out of nowhere.

Someone planted it in my head, perhaps television, perhaps the cinema, perhaps the stories of mothers, or perhaps a little girl named Faradilla Sandy whose face once haunted the childhood of millions of Indonesian children.

I have even forgotten when I first watched the haunting film “Ratapan Anak Tiri”. All I remember is the feeling; after the film ended, I felt something had changed. For the first time I realised that parents could leave, that home could change. That the world does not always run as adults promised.

Years passed, I grew up, and Indonesia grew bigger too. Television, which used to be only TVRI and five private stations, turned into hundreds of viewing choices. Cassettes turned into CDs, CDs turned into digital files, then everything moved to mobile phones.

I thought those stories had disappeared. Until one afternoon a few months ago, I found myself doing something that felt a little strange. I searched for Ratapan Anak Tiri. I do not know why, perhaps nostalgia, perhaps age.

Perhaps there was a part of me that wanted to meet its childhood fear again. The search led me to an old shop on the outskirts of Jakarta. There I did not only find Ratapan Anak Tiri, I found its entire kingdom.

Old wooden shelves stood close together, almost touching the ceiling. On them were arranged hundreds of VHS and Betamax cassettes whose covers had faded with time. Some of the plastic had yellowed. Some were even starting to crack. But the names were still legible.

Ratapan Anak Tiri 1, 2 and 3, Ratapan dan Rintihan, Air Mata Ibu, Derita Tiada Akhir, Badai Pasti Berlalu, Luka di Atas Luka, and many more. I laughed quietly; it felt like finding a national museum of suffering.

I picked up one cassette, then another, then another. The longer I looked, the stranger I felt. As if a nation had once spent most of its time crying.

On the next shelf, an old man, perhaps the shop owner, was repairing a VHS player that might or might not still work. “Do people still look for these films, Sir?” I asked.

He looked up briefly and smiled. “They still do.” “Why were all the titles so sad back then?” He chuckled. “Because life was hard back then.” His answer was simple, too simple, because I knew it was not entirely true.

The years when those films were made were precisely the years when Indonesia was busy building itself. New roads were opened, factories were erected, cities grew larger. Television entered living rooms, people began buying motorcycles. Some even began dreaming of owning a house in the city, to become ‘gedongan’ people, as they said.

Statistically, the nation was moving forward at that time, but strangely, cinema screens were filled with children losing their parents, broken families, crying mothers, and people abandoned by fate. Ratapan Anak Tiri, which haunted my imagination, turned out to be one of the best-selling films of 1974.

I stood in front of the shelf for quite a long time. The more titles I read, the stranger I felt. As if the entire Indonesian film industry at one time had agreed that there was no entertainment more interesting than suffering.

Lost children, fathers leaving their families for the city, mothers crying, stepchildren being tortured, poor people being humiliated. And almost always there was someone leaving home, whatever the reason, migrating to seek money and fortune, getting into legal trouble, quarrels, anything.

At first I thought it was just a coincidence. Until my eyes caught several other names that were no less famous. There was a film about a child abandoned by his father after the father became successful in the city.

There was the story of Elvy Sukaesih being forgotten by her own family. There were stories of children looking for their father in Jakarta, only to find that he had remarried. There were also stories that almost always ended with a meeting that came too late or regret that came after everything had changed.

Strange. Because the more titles I saw, the more I felt that I was not looking at a collection of different films. I was looking at the same story, told over and over again. With different faces, with different actors.

With different songs, but with the same wound. I looked back at the old shop owner. Outside, the sound of motorcycles and trucks mixed with the sound of the call to prayer beginning to be heard from afar. Jakarta moved as usual, hurrying towards tomorrow.

Then suddenly I realised something. Perhaps what made these films sell well was not because Indonesian society liked sadness. Perhaps they came to the cinema because they recognised themselves. Because behind the stepmother, the father who remarried, the child who lost his home, and the broken family, there was one story that kept repeating. Someone left, and someone was left behind. And someone else had to learn to accept a world that was no longer the same.

I picked up the Betamax cassette of Ratapan Anak Tiri from the shelf again. For the first time I began to suspect that these films were not telling stories about family. They were telling stories about Indonesia. About a nation on the move.

About villages beginning to send their children to the city, about fathers leaving to seek a better life, waving goodbye to their wives and children from the top of a bus, about families slowly separated by distance. All about the price that had to be paid when a nation began to build itself.

And perhaps, I thought, here lies the secret. GDP may record what development produces, but these films preserve what development feels like. Those lament films were not just entertainment. They were the emotional archive of a nation learning to part ways.

After watching “Ratapan Anak Tiri” again, I felt an injustice because of that film. For decades, the stepmother became a national antagonist. She appeared when the father remarried, she came after the mother died, she brought suffering.

She made children cry. And almost always, she had to be the villain for the story to work. But life is rarely that simple. I know several stepmothers in real life; rarely do they resemble those in the films.

Some raised children who were not their own flesh and blood. Some cooked, washed, drove to school, attended parent-teacher meetings, and worried about the exam results of children they never gave birth to.

They did all of that without ever receiving the title of hero, perhaps because society had already written their role. On cinema screens, they were destined to be suspects. I looked back at the cover of Ratapan Anak Tiri, and suddenly a strange question arose. What if we have misunderstood the main character in that story all along? What if the stepmother was never the main character? What if she was just a symbol?

Because when I began to look more closely, the fear that appeared in the lament films was always the same. Not a fear of the stepmother, but a fear of something that comes after loss.

When someone who had been there for a long time left, and someone new came to replace them. That is what the children actually feared. Not the stepmother, but replacement.

Something that once provided a sense of security disappeared. Then the world said: “Don’t worry. There is a replacement.” But the human heart never works that way. There is no replacement for a mother, no replacement for a childhood home, no replacement for a hometown. And perhaps there is no perfect replacement for the world we are leaving behind.

I fell silent. Because suddenly I felt I was reading something far bigger than just the history of Indonesian cinema. Does development not do the same thing? Villages are slowly replaced by cities, rice fields replaced by factories. House yards replaced by housing estates, small shops replaced by minimarkets, extended families replaced by nuclear families, neighbours replaced by security guards. Everything changes.

And like the stepmother in those old films, the replacement is not always evil. In fact, it is often more efficient, more modern, more prosperous. But still, something is lost, something that never enters the statistics. Something that is never recorded in economic growth figures.

I began to imagine Indonesia in the early 1970s. Fathers leaving for Jakarta, children left behind in the village. Some succeeded, some failed. Some returned bringing motorcycles and cars, some never returned at all.

Meanwhile in the cinemas, Faradilla Sandy cried, Elvy Sukaesih cried, and Rhoma Irama sang about the little people squeezed by the city. Millions of viewers bought tickets to see it. Today economists remember that era as the beginning of development and industrialisation, and investors call it the start of modernisation.

But perhaps ordinary people remember it differently. They remember it as a time when more and more people left, and more and more people learned to live after being left behind.

Suddenly I remembered the old shop owner’s answer. “Because life was hard back then.” I smiled slightly. Perhaps he was right. But not hard in the way economists imagine.

Not about income, not about poverty, not about consumption. But hard because a nation was learning to leave its old world behind, without really knowing what kind of new world awaited it. And when society had no language to explain a change that big, they made films, songs, stories and laments.

Because sometimes, tears can explain something that numbers cannot. The generation that watched Faradilla Sandy was precisely the generation that succeeded. They are the generation that built modern Indonesia. They are at least 40 years old now.

They witnessed television entering living rooms, toll roads being built, universities multiplying, motorcycles becoming affordable, housing estates growing, and the Indonesian middle class being born. They are the generation that transformed Indonesia from a relatively poor nation into the largest economy in Southeast Asia.

That is why the longer I stared at those old cassette shelves, the more I felt something was wrong. If development is a success story, why are the memories it left behind filled with laments?

If the future truly arrived as promised, why were cinema screens filled with children losing their homes, mothers losing their husbands, and families losing someone they loved? I looked back at the covers of those films.

Then slowly I began to understand. Perhaps society remembers that phase of development differently. They remember it as a time when more and more people left, and more and more people learned a new life after being left behind.

Perhaps that is why almost all laments always begin with someone leaving. Because development, in the end, is a story about movement.

People move jobs, move cities, move social classes, move ways of life. And every move always leaves something behind.

I remembered the wooden houses slowly emptying in various villages in Sumatra. Terraces that were once busy are now occupied only by elderly people whose hair is turning white. Small shops that used to be centres of stories are slowly replaced by brighter minimarkets.

There is nothing wrong with that. Most of those changes even make life better. But still, something is lost. Something too small to be recorded by the state, but too big to be forgotten by humans.

Perhaps that is why these lament stories were popular. Not to reject development, but to preserve memories of the things that did not come along. About the homes left behind, about the people who did not manage to board the train of development. About the voices slowly disappearing from daily life. About the old world slowly fading before it could be photographed.

And for the first time I began to see those films differently. They are not stories about failure or family dysfunction. On the contrary, they are the shadows that always appear when a society is successfully changing.

Because every time a nation moves forward, something is always left behind. And sometimes, what is left behind is not money, but memories, closeness, a sense of belonging, and the small parts of life that once felt so ordinary, until one day we realise that everything is gone.

I put the cassette back on the shelf; the sun was beginning to set. The old shop owner was busy again with the VHS player he had dismantled. I thanked him and stepped outside. Outside, Jakarta was still moving as usual. Motorcycles passed by, fried food vendors began turning on their lights, and the call to prayer sounded from afar.

I walked slowly along the pavement, which was starting to get wet from the afternoon rain. Still thinking about Faradilla Sandy and the film Ratapan Anak Tiri. Still thinking about the fathers who left, still thinking about the houses slowly emptying. Still thinking about how strange it is that a nation in the midst of building itself holds so many stories about loss.

Suddenly a truck passed too close. Splash! Water from a puddle splattered onto my trousers. “Ouch!” I grumbled, stepping back. The truck kept going. I almost cursed. Until my eyes caught the writing on its back. “NO MATTER HOW CRUEL A STEPMOTHER IS, THE CAPITAL CITY IS CRUELER.” I fell silent, muttering “Masya Allah”.

The truck moved further away, passed a red light, then disappeared around a bend. And for some reason, for the first time in my life, I felt I truly understood what “Ratapan Anak Tiri” was trying to say.

Long live the 81st Republic of Indonesia! Merdeka!