A Place to Call Home

WEEKENDER   |  Thu, 07/02/2009 4:05 PM  |  Living & Learning

At least once a year my husband and I visit his hometown of Purwokerto, in Central Java. It is a mid-sized town of about 250,000, located along the arterial trans-Java road.

It’s not exactly a sleepy town, but nor is it bustling. Aside from a hypermarket, a small fleet of metered taxis and one or two new karaoke bars, nothing much has changed, according to him.

When we are not out on culinary runs or sipping coffee in a hill resort at the foot of Mount Slamet, we mostly lie around in front of the TV, watching HBO, in his father’s sprawling home. But I do not mind. It feels like a real holiday – no itinerary and no plans, except about what to eat for lunch and dinner.

But when he first took me there I was amazed by what an attachment he and his siblings have for their hometown, where they were born and raised before going on to university.

He took me to his favorite eating places to sample a legendary goat satay, scrumptious sroto soup, the best nasi rames (mixed rice dish) and half-fried tempeh snack mendoan. He showed me his schools, the spot where he had a motorcycle accident, the house of his former crush and the barbershop with funny name where he always got his hair cut – Sumber Ganteng or “the source of handsomeness”.

All the evidence of his childhood is still there. More than anything, seeing his connection to his childhood makes me feel rootless – a faint twinge of regret that I have not lived long enough in any one place to call it home. If I were to go back to my elementary schools (the three I went to in three different towns, two different islands), I probably would not even recognize them, even though they sometimes pop up in random scenes in my dreams.

My family lived a nomadic life, following my father who was relocated every few years in his banking career. I was born in Jakarta; the moving had begun by the time I turned four. It wasn’t until my second semester of junior high school that we returned to Jakarta. Then a couple of years later I left to go to school overseas.

Even within the same town in college, I lived in nine different places, moving from a dormitory to an apartment, from one rented house to another, whether because of growing estranged from housemates, keeping a pet illegally, hosting too many parties, or quarreling with a fussy landlady.

This pattern of mobile living might be a theme in our family. Even within one city we often moved two or three times, making my mom a master of the art of packing.

If the start of one’s life is any indication of how he or she will live it later, this might be true for my parents. My mom was born in North Sumatra and had moved to Jakarta with the rest of her family by the age of three. My dad ran away to Jakarta when he was a teenager and made a life for himself working hard labor to pay his way through school all the way to university. It would be another 20 years before he revisited his relatives in his kampung in South Sumatra, and about 40 years or so before mom stepped foot back in her birthplace.

But still, they have a place they can call home. I don’t feel the same way.

When I went back to Jakarta from school in 1996, it did not feel like a homecoming, just another relocation. And though 13 years later I’m still here – the longest I have stayed in one place – it still rarely feels like home. I have not developed an emotional attachment to it.

I don’t really miss it when I am away for an extended period. Like other Jakarta dwellers, I bitch and moan about the traffic congestion, flood problems and murderous holes pocking the streets.

Whenever I visit a more developed city overseas, I am reminded of what my fellow city dwellers have been denied in Jakarta: greenery, good public transportation, free and enjoyable public spaces, sustainable waste management systems. All these are proof that the system works for the benefit of the taxpayers, their money going back to building and maintaining facilities for them.  

Sure, there are brief moments when I am awash with romantic sentiment. Sometimes when I walk along a bustling street downtown to savor street food, the dynamic of the city feels electric: the resilient street vendors, the enterprising buskers, people devouring their meal on crude benches. But once the charm wears off, it is replaced by the sight of the garbage and the dangerous cracks in the sidewalk already crammed with hawkers.

It looks like I’m not the only one who does not feel connected to city. Like other world metropolises, Jakarta is a true melting pot. It is a means to an end for people like my parents: a stage one goes through in life. It is no wonder they don’t feel a sense of belonging here. If Jakarta is the only Indonesian city you have ever been to, you only need to visit a smaller town in Java to see that we are not a nation of litterers, and that not everyone treats Earth like its giant trashcan.

I am not just talking about people who live on river banks, but those who casually throw anything they don’t need out the window of their luxury car, a sight that always makes me grind my teeth in anger.

Maybe I’m being too critical, after all. Just like this country, this is a city that feels perpetually in transition. But if only we could grow more trees instead of malls and high-rise luxury apartments. If only there were strict enforcement of laws and penalties for littering.

If only I could be convinced that our taxes are being spent wisely, for our benefit, this city might just grow on me. Then maybe I’ll have a place I can call home.

+ Devi Asmarani

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