'The White Banyan' preserves old stories

The White Banyan, Le Banian Blanc; Lahirnya Kembali Beringin Putih; Narrator: Elizabeth Prasetyo; Distributor: Basis Yogya; p. 247; Price: Rp 40,000 (soft cover); Rp 60,000 (hard cover).

JAKARTA (JP): It is inevitable that the reader of The White Banyan would find the book a kind of cross between Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince and Ong Ken Seng's multicultural Lear.

This enchanting tale, retold by Elisabeth Prasetyo, is enriched with charming drawings by Yogyakarta's world-renowned artist Heri Dono rendered in a similar spirit to de Saint- Exupiry's illustrations.

The book is presented in four languages: French, Indonesian, Japanese and English, all in one single publication. This, with the existence of some captions in Javanese, makes it a truly multicultural tome.

It starts of with the tale of The Elephant Tree. The curiosity of the narrator -- who takes the role of a volcanologist inspecting the activities of Mt. Merapi in Central Java -- about the existence of a large banyan tree at such a high altitude on the volcano, and the strange sound that can be heard there, leads engineer-on-duty Pram Sartono to recount the old legend. During this time, people who were originally sailors started to plant rice.

However, not long thereafter elephants destroyed the rice fields. Led by a figure called Barata, men started to hunt the elephants and claimed victory over the animals. However, one day Little Flower, the leader's beloved daughter, was trampled by an angry elephant. Barata vowed vengeance and was determined to kill all the elephants.

One by one he killed all the elephants, until he realized that killing them would not bring his daughter back to life. He became enlightened that only by caring for the suffering of others would he be able to cure his own pain.

So, he started to take care of the wounded animals who were climbing to the elephant's paradise, the northern side of the volcano which the elephants chose as their final resting place.

Most of the elephants were dying, and Barata attended to the very last of them, and said, "You are the last one. If you die, the hunters will finally be able to tell their children that elephants never existed.

"In order to protect you, I will put a spell on you. You will become a tree and I will live in your branches." So, the elephant tree was born; it stood at the crossroads before the village, near the volcano.

The elephant tree wished to be freed from the spell that spared its life, but Barata rejected the request to ensure the tree's safety. Later on, the people's need for more land for rice cultivation put the tree under the threat of being chopped down. Barata undid the spell and led the tree to the elephant's paradise.

However, the tree confessed to him a long kept secret and asked his dear friend to recast his spell. The spell was recast, and the elephant tree once again stood erect at the crossroads.

As the writer and journalist Sindhunata mentions in his introduction, the book is a story about friendship, a friendship that "has to be slowly developed and tested, growing from hate to love, from obligation to sacrifice, from hostility to reconciliation, until at last it turns into an eternal bond which nothing can ever destroy ... In the end there is no elephant and there is no man. There is only the nothingness of the two friends which manifests itself through the existence of an old banyan tree."

He also points out that the book was published in an auspicious time, not long after the end of the New Order, controlled by former president Soeharto's Golongan Karya "functional group" which used as its symbol a banyan tree on a yellow background.

"The banyan which in olden times used to symbolize existence, protection and the resistance of the people ... is white. The banyan is the tree of the people," Sindhunata wrote. The White Banyan signifies the reclamation of the banyan which has been seized by the state for far too long.

In many ways the story of The Elephant Tree is the story of our contemporary society, struggling for national reconciliation. It is a story that might be relevant to what is happening in the Maluku islands and other troubled regions of Indonesia.

The book includes stories surrounding Mt. Merapi, its sacred sites of the Elephant Stone and White Banyan, and the accounts of its first recorded eruption on Aug.4, 1672 compiled by historian de Graaf in 1940.

The volcano's significance in society is related in a chapter entitled Offerings 1995.

The White Banyan is dedicated to the inhabitants of Kinahrejo, the village located on the slopes of Mt. Merapi which provides the setting for the Elephant Tree story. In particular it is dedicated to mBah Marjian, the kuncen or "key keeper" of the volcano. The book closes with the accounts of Mbah Marijan's dreams, written with white text on dark pages, suggesting their origins in the dream world.

The story of The Elephant Tree was originally written in 1991, around the time when the author gave birth to her daughter in Java. At the time, the Elisabeth Prasetyo had not yet met mBah Marijan. Later, after a few encounters, mBah Marijan also related the story to her and pointed out the sacred sites of the Elephant Stone and White Banyan.

The author would tell her daughter that words were not only used for speaking, but also to show that which we cannot see, "the things which have always been there but which we are afraid to see."

Long before she heard about the story of the Elephant Tree, every time she passed by a banyan tree, she always had the feeling that it was not a tree, but an elephant.

-- Amir Sidharta