Togetherness

Sometimes the simplest question requires the most complicated answer.

For me that question is: where are you from?

When asked by another Indonesian, I often hesitate before replying, trying first to figure out what actual information the questioner is after. Is it where I was born? The origin of my ethnicity? Or where I have lived most of my life? Because in Indonesia, that question could mean all of the above.

The longer, more explanatory answer to this is: I was born in Jakarta, to parents of both Sumatran (Batak) and South Sumatran (Palembang) origins, though I’ve only been to their birthplaces once. I spent my childhood in Jakarta, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, and the latter part of my school years in the United States.

Jakarta is the city I’ve lived in the longest so far, so it makes sense for me to consider it home, but I always find this answer unsatisfactory and feel compelled to give additional commentary to clarify it – never mind that most Indonesians only ask this question to make conversation.  Often, to save time, I resort to my stock response: I’m half Batak and half Palembang.

In a multiethnic country like Indonesia, where we’re from matters, if only for the trivial purpose of satisfying our curiosity and our impulse to profile people. It’s amusing to be in a waiting area or on a flight, sitting next to a certain type of inquisitive person who tries to guess what  your ethnicity is.  Among others, I’ve been thought of as Manadonese and Ambonese.

Once, when I corrected someone who guessed I was Javanese, she said: “Oh, I should’ve known from your cheekbones.” (Not to mention the temperament, of course, though she didn’t say it in so many words).

I don’t mind the stereotypes. In some ways we fit them, depending on how much we have been conditioned by our surroundings. But sometimes I find the fuss over ethnicity irrelevant, because, frankly, I feel more Indonesian than I do Batak or Palembang. This might be true too with many people of my generation and younger. It’s more to do with fact that the experiences I share with them are more related to being Indonesian than to being a particular ethnicity.  

Because we are a generation that grew up under the New Order, the uniformity of our experiences goes deeper. We studied in the same school system and read the same textbooks (and the same comic books after school). We learned only one version of our national history, because any challenging views would have been tantamount to subversion. We sang patriotic songs in class, and learned in art class to draw the same landscape picture, which almost always had a mountain peak (or two), a winding road, rice fields and a few coconut trees.

As there was only one TV channel (up until the early ‘90s), my generation grew up watching the same shows on state-owned TVRI. We could hum the tune of local puppet show Unyil, which – like many shows back then – was often used to disseminate government programs. Once a year at the end of September, we had no choice but to watch the G30S PKI movie to see the government’s take on the abortive communist coup, and how a then little-known military figure rose to power by exerting leadership in a time of crisis.

Every Monday morning, students and civil servants alike attended a flag-raising ceremony in their respective school or office yard. And every Friday morning, we all performed the state-sanctioned callisthenic routine, the Senam Kesegaran Jasmani (Physical Wellness Exercise), to the raspy-sounding but cheerful music coming from an overplayed cassette tape.

What it boils down to is that, for middle-class urbanites, many aspects of our lives didn’t vary much from others who grew up during the New Order.

These almost, ironically, communistic experiences might have been the tie that binds us. So, despite our different ethnicities, our religious upbringing, our families’ annual income, most of us could relate to each other as Indonesians.

I wonder sometimes whether the experience of being Indonesian is different for the much younger generations. After all, this is an Indonesia where anything goes in politics, entertainment and almost everything else. It is a country that has, in recent years, grown increasingly conservative and, at the same time, Westernized, where consumerism is the rule of the day, and where (in most urban centers) you’re pretty much free to wear whatever (whether a tube top or headscarves, which were a rare sight back in the 1980s); a country that, thanks to the Internet revolution, is nearly distanceless from the rest of the world.

A more autonomous education system now allows schools to hold the flag-raising ceremony whenever they want (if they want to at all), and adopts a more flexible policy when it comes to textbooks.
Some teachers even assert their own political perspectives when they teach. The growth of national-plus schools, where English is the language of instruction and which adopt a hybrid of local and international-oriented curriculum, must also shape the outlook of many of these young people. In some cases, they are more global citizens than they are Indonesians, with many of them conversing more comfortably or preferring to write in English.

This is, after all, the generation whose lives revolve around telecommunication technology. It seems like they’re born with innate abilities to operate computerized machines and to interact in the virtual realms of the Internet. They text without even looking at the phone’s keypad, they battle each other on online games, they vent on Twitter, and they spread viral videos on YouTube. It’s hard not to see that their experience of Indonesia is different than the one I experienced. Their technology-encased lives may mean they have a less sentimental attachment to this country than my generation.

To be fair, this must be what my parents’ generation (having experienced the turmoil of the revolution and the early years of the independence era) felt about the seeming apathy and softness of my generation, so I should not be judging them.

Being Indonesian is not something I’m conscious of every day, but the feeling must be deeper than the wax-resistant dye on my batik.

To me it is always that proud lump in my throat when the national anthem is played at a major  sports event. It is the collective grief felt when hearing of another bomb explosion in our homeland, and the seething anger of seeing the investigation of a blatant corruption case undermined by those in power. It is the genuine hope we harbored when we voted for our leaders directly for the first time (and, of course, the disappointment that hit when they didn’t deliver).

I have a feeling that if we channel these collective emotions into something positive, our nation might rise to the greatness that our founding fathers once envisioned.  We have what it takes.

+ Devi Asmarani

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