W

e meet millions of people during our journey through life. Only a few make a lasting impression. One among the few is a man who did his part to make a difference to others, and to his heritage.

His name was Suratidjo. Unlike the usual ways that people form acquaintances, we first met each other thanks to a street sign that caught my eye.

I was happily eating fritters on a visit to Kotagede in Yogyakarta when I noticed the small sign hanging on the wooden gate of a charming old house next door. The signboard was succinct in its message, written in Indonesian: "Learn Mocopat For Free Here". It was the word mocopat - which seemed so outlandish - that compelled me to go in and ask more.

OK, I admit, there were actually two compelling words. The other one, pushing me even further to find out more, was "Free".

Although nobody was in the front yard, I decided to wait and kept calling "Hello?" without really expecting anything to happen. To be honest, I was only trying to kill time while my relatives browsed at a nearby silversmith's. A moment later a man with graying hair and a mustache emerged from a smaller wooden structure inside the house compound, replying in a throaty voice, "Hello".

In short, this is how events unfolded. In the course of 15 minutes, I learned from him what mocopat roughly was. It is an archaic Javanese art of singing, whereby the performer sings, or reads, the lyrics, four syllables by four syllables. (Mocopat is a shortened form of a Javanese idiom, mocone papat-papat, meaning "to read four each time".) I listened to him sing in the style, after which he asked, quite naturally, whether I would like to learn how to sing like him.

I didn't give a definite answer when I left him hurriedly because my relatives wanted to move on elsewhere. Pak Suratidjo and I simply exchanged names.

The year was 2005. Only eight months later, on the morning of May 27, 2006, a magnitude-six earthquake devastated Yogyakarta.

Four months after that, I returned to Yogyakarta with a traveling companion, and with one thought in mind: to visit Pak Suratidjo in Kotagede, which according to the news reports had been destroyed by the quake. To my surprise, amid the ruins that once were beautiful homes, Pak Suratidjo's house at No. 51A Jalan Kemasan was still more or less in place.

So was the sole occupant of the house. He greeted us animatedly, and after we divulged our intention - we wanted to have a go at studying mocopat - he invited us to stay at his place during our visit. He could use some company, he said, now that his wife had died and his children all led good lives out of town.

"Make this simple abode your home," he said. "There's a small bed for the lady here, and I believe you won't mind sleeping on that old sofa."

He grinned at us like we were a pair of longtime friends who were accustomed to visiting him.

We soon found ourselves sitting on the floor of the cool terrace, listening to his tales about the earthquake and the house. Built in the early 1900s, the house was largely intact because it was made almost entirely of wood.

"What worried me most during the quake wasn't my home, but my gamelan instruments," he said, gazing at his collection neatly arranged on the other side of his front porch.

Pak Suratidjo, for us, was the epitome of a great teacher. Before we had prepared ourselves for the first lesson, while my partner and I were dilly-dallying, he was already sitting cross-legged on the terrace floor, his posture straight as always. He seemed fully composed. From deep within his throat emerged a euphonious chant:

Jago kluruk / rame kapiyarsi / Lowo kalong / luru pandhelikan ...

A brief silence followed every once in a while. He did not hurry us to start; he simply beckoned us to come, using his formidable voice, the way the flowers in his garden elegantly enticed playful butterflies.

He gave us full freedom regarding the schedule. We were not learning in a classroom, but rather at the open terrace; it was entirely up to us if we grew tired and would like to stop, Pak Tidjo decided. We did stop many times, I have to say, being two not-so-serious novices.

During those intermissions in our singing sessions - in which even his deliberately toned-down voice remained the most dominant - Pak Tidjo enlightened us on the historical, sociological and theoretical aspects of mocopat. He spoke about his radio performances and planned recordings, and about Candra Kirana, an ensemble of gamelan players and mocopat singers who gathered in his brother's pavilion behind his house once a week to practice Islamic mocopat songs. It so happened that the group was scheduled to meet on our first night at his place.

Thus we were introduced to the real world of mocopat, where Pak Suratidjo's distinguishing voice was the golden thread running through the big, dazzling fabric. To hear him sing with his utter power, joined by other, no less spine-tingling male and female voices and wrapped in the resounding gamelan tune, was wonderful.

On the second night of our stay, something no less spectacular occurred. At 2 a.m., the incessantly loud snores of Pak Tidjo from one corner of the wooden house (which had no permanent partition inside) were drowned out by rumbling sounds. I was abruptly awakened and saw the house rock. Seconds later Pak Tidjo awoke, too. We immediately raced to the wooden doors and out of the house.

It was another big earthquake, probably a delayed aftershock from the major one in May. No significant damage was found, and an hour later, after we chatted standing up under the starry sky, we went back to sleep. The following afternoon we departed, having only learned to sing two mocopat songs and not mastering them. I clearly remember his words before we left, "Anytime you're in Jogja, you know you have a home here."

For almost a year after we returned from Yogyakarta, I talked with Pak Tidjo several times over the phone. I never had the slightest feeling that I would never see him again, and that our last meeting would actually be the last one.

The sad news came via a text message sent from his number. One of his children replied to an earlier message to him, informing me that he had passed away. Although I had spent only three days with him in all, barely knowing him deeper than his outermost skin, forging a flimsy friendship upon our teacher-pupil relationship - still, I grieved deeply. Our brief spell of togetherness resonated so profoundly in my heart.

Pak Suratidjo chose to return to his hometown of Yogyakarta after his retirement from a government agency, spending his pensioner's life teaching mocopat, for free, to anyone interested. It was not simply because he loved it. He did it because he wished to instill his love of mocopat in the hearts of the younger generations, so that it may live on, amid the encroaching "cultural flattening" (to use his own words) of modernity.

Long before the so-called "claiming" of a neighbor's heritage became routine practice, Pak Tidjo already did what I think amounted to a more vigilant alternative to just condemning the act: He became a steward of this subtle art. He kept on practicing it, chronicling it, collecting it, as well as teaching it and publicizing it, dedicating his life to it. His approach was more patriotic, and certainly more prudent, than succumbing to fury, burning other nations' flags in protest and brainlessly resorting to jingoistic violence.

Disasters such as earthquakes may destroy people and even the most valuable artifacts, because they are by nature corporeal. But disasters cannot eradicate knowledge, traditions or art. It is only us who are fully capable of doing that. It is our ignorance that often lets these "intangibles" die.

Pak Tidjo has been gone for two years, but his 100-year-old house stands to this day. So do the memories of him in the hearts he touched, and in so doing, nurtured. But more important than keeping his house or memories of him intact is to uphold his legacy. We can afford to lose an unsung hero like Pak Suratidjo, but we cannot afford to see mocopat become a lost art.