Letter: Nostalgia of old Jakarta

Sat, 06/28/2008 11:54 AM  |  Reader's Forum

I have enjoyed your excellent articles about endangered fruit and ondel-ondel puppets (The Jakarta Post, June 23). I am not an Indonesian but a real Jakartan.

I am a 85-year-old now and I hope somebody who reads my story will meet me to have a long talk about Betawi, where I lived long before the invasion of the Japanese army in 1942.

As a young boy I went to kampungs and to festivals where I enjoyed the ondel-ondel, which danced before us (but to be honest, the ondel ondel then looked a bit different).

I had a photo album with pictures taken of those enjoyable giant puppets. Unfortunately the photos got lost so I cannot prove what I say now.

But it makes no difference. The Betawi people have all the right to make their puppets and enjoy them. Still I have to say that the puppets then were made by great Betawis with great imagination.

Yes, those were the years of colonialism when Indonesians hardly counted and were seen as inferior. I am until now still ashamed of those ugly and dark ages. They belong for good to the past.

If there is evidence of a Betawi of yesteryear, let him tell me what gandastrulie is and how tauge goreng tastes and how tree ripe kemang smelled, and cepedak, and what an orang Betawi sold in those days when he cried kikiu.

I still dream of some of my Indonesian friends at Canisius, smart young men who earned 9s and 10s in math, science, Dutch literature, German and French!

Those golden years are history now. I am happy that since I came back to Indonesia, I can do some good by helping with their English. I would like to write about those years and how it truly was.

Where is Hidayat now and Simurankir? God bless Indonesia.

JOHN S.
Prigen, Central Java

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.