God of Small Things

"God of Small Things"

Stories are being told, because among people there is always an unquenchable thirst for more and more human experience.

It may be the bed time story that you would have heard as a child, or a story that your teacher told during moral science class, or as a good morning thought, or a cover story in a magazine, or a gossip story about a film star, or a story about some incident that happened to somebody, or watching a story being enacted in silver screen or small screen, the fact remains undeniable that we all are drawn towards some kind of human experience apart from our own lives in the form of a story.

This sort of experience is something that every story promises, but only a few satisfy. One among of few such stories is, ‘The God Of Small Things’ . I was lucky that I came across this book and I love it not for the story, but the way the story was been told.

It was this book that made me fall in love with words. A proof of how a small sentence made with the right words can have a unique meaning that resonate weird feelings, beyond other forms of expression.

Reading this book was like following someone’s train of thoughts, going forward and backwards, like going inside someone’s mind, like living someone’s memories and like seeing things in the same someone’s point of view, while comparing this with that.

Arundati Roy’s masterpiece has a slight biography like touch. She is surely a very gifted writer. Her style of writing is unique. But what she writes is like a vomit of words. Yeah! Vomit; though not disgusting. For it follows absolutely no rules of story telling. On the contrary it is filled with unexpected similes and sudden short funny sentences.

It was one of sincerest book I have ever read. Judging by the style, I was sure that it was the unedited first attempt. For, though the book is wonderful, it is also an unorganized sequence of words. And I was right. She did say that in an interview.

This book had originated from sudden flow of ideas that came in to Ms. Roy’s head from nowhere, that she felt the sudden passionate urge to regurgitate it all on paper through ink. Just that! Unedited.

Someone who considers books only as a source of entertainment and want to read only for passing time may not be able to appreciate this book’s unique splendor.

Such people may find the words pointless and the story going no where. They might even wonder how this book won the Booker prize. (I wasn’t surprised to find a couple of negative reviews on this book.)

But for me, this book is a treasure, for it satisfies my need to read a story that would, in some sense, matter. It is this book that I take up before cuddling in my bed everyday. As I read it and re-read it, I find myself falling more and more in love, with the words and the emotion behind it.

To describe it using Ms. Roy’s words, I should say that this book was ‘sick sweet’. No wonder the book won rare honors to Ms. Roy. Moreover it is a source of inspiration for people like me whose life ambition is to write a book.

Hope, someday I will write a book, and win a Booker prize for it :)

*Suzanna Arundhati Roy[1] (born November 24, 1961) is an Indian novelist, writer and activist. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel, The God of Small Things, and, in 2002, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize.

http://www.mouthshut.com/review/God_Of_Small_Things___The_-_Arundhati_Roy-87102-1.html

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Goenawan Mohamad: On God and Other Unfinished Things

I was feel alienated when came to community that I visited several times at the past. Last night at Freedom Institute-Jakarta, the newest book of Goenawan Mohamad (a.k.a. GM) –the founder of Tempo and one of Indonesian journalist living legend- was launch. Present as speakers were Rev. Martin Lukito Sinaga and K.H. Husein Muhammad. As I observed, guest whose came divided into: GM’s inner circles, peoples who their work and daily life connected to GM including press, peoples who like party and ‘food free to eat’ like students, and peoples like me: who confused to categorized themselves.

However, confusion was not my monopoly that night, because many guests whose came looks shocked when they read this unique book. This book is compilation of 99 short fragments which named book, titled with weird like some philosophical book: On God & Other Unfinished Things. Read this book, I remember Nietzsche’s work which used fragment broadly, even longer. This model is shortcut for ‘peoples who have many ideas’ which often that idea came by co-incidentally fast that needs to write down immediately before it pass away. It is logic, if fragment chosen as the best way to extract idea. Because of that, never fall into confusion if you don’t find chapter number, changed with fragment although it not mean as a row. Never think you can read this book regularly like complete book from the first page until the last page. I was open any page randomly and a-ha!, I got the same sensation. Every fragment was separate but still related each other. Readers have no obligation to read until finish then. Only one thing clear, this book explained about searching process of one wayfarer about meaning of life. And life in the par excellence form is God.

The author seemed to show off his knowledge about world horizon. Likely he already discovery every valley, climb every mountain, dive In under every ocean, for write off this book. The never ending style since the era he wrote on Catatan Pinggir (means Side Note, name of his column) at Tempo magazine before it was banned. At his brief GM acknowledge also there are some parts of his book came from his legendary column. For readers who have limitation about religion horizon, this book could shake your faith. Although it not put bright blurp on it’s cover like Da Vinci Code was.

He took splash stories from far lands: Illiad which tell about Troy (38), al-Mutawakkil Baghdad caliph (41), 1001-Night Tales by Shahrazad (11), Sultan Akbar from India (21), Musa (23, 26,27,28,30), Yesus (24), Sophocles and Mahabharata (39), Serat Cabolek from Java (52), Ratu Kidul from Java also (67), Yosua (88), Sherlock Holmes and Andersen (56), Cervantez’ Don Quixote (81), until Mel Gibson’ Passion of The Christ (24) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’ Babel. GM also rowing many great names –including from Indonesia history-: Sunan Kalijaga (1), Sitor Situmorang (2), Rilke (3,60), Omar Khayam (4), Subagio Sastrowardoyo (4,62), Chairil Anwar (4,16,32), Derrida (6,61,96), Holderlin (7), Amir Hamzah (8,21,40), Ibn Rushd (8, 22), Ibn Sina (8), Al-Ghazali (8,31,76), Buddha (9,28), Shakespeare (9), Karl Barth (13), Tagore and Adorno (15), William James, Roland Barthes (16), Tahar Djaout (17), Alan Badiou (22, 54), Simone Weil (21), Nietzsche (26,74,84), Lyotard (27), Muhammad (28,30), Santo Agustinus and Rudolf Otto (28), Boris Pasternak (33), Pramoedya Ananta Toer (33,53), Brecht (36,83), Noah (40), Al-Tabari (40), Goebbels dan Hitler (42,56), Claude Lefort (48), Baudrillard (49), Rene Girard (50), Lacan (51,54), Descartes (52), Neruda and Walter Benjamin (53), Foucault (54), Karl Marx (54), Sayyed Qutb (55), Gadamer (55), Heidegger (29,42,52,61,67), Ilya Ehrenburg (53), Albert Camus (57), Asmuni (58), Dao and Ranggawarsita (59), Levinas (61,85), Heraklitus (62), Vico (62), Marcel Proust (63), Cokot, Duchamp and Jean Tinguely (64), Husserl, Basho, Matisse, Jean-Luc Marion, Rusli, John Cage (65), Kafka (66), Abraham (68,79), Kierkegaard (68), Allen Ginsberg (70), W.H. Auden, Ibn Arabi dan Herodes (71), Naoki Sakai, Ito Jinsai and Kong Hu Cu (73), Angelus Silesius (74), Signorelli and Michelangelo (78), Roberto Calasso (79), George Steiner (80), Dylan Thomas (82), Fukuyama (84), Iqbal (85), Joan Copjec (86), Nelson Mandela (87), Derek Walcott and Sukarno (92), Rachel Bespaloff (93), Marion (95), Groucho Marx and Franz Fanon (96), dan Habermas and Mother Sud (99).

I feel strange, from that many names which like worker who like to put ther presence card on the machine, GM not mention many names of God as they are same each other. He put God concept from any ages and cultures as simply as “God” word only. As simple as that. Just like what he hope from his book reader not to think too hard and look into his writing as simple as look at many stars which became the mystery of night sky. Then, this book maybe as manifestation of question about God which shadowing author’s mind for years. The thing that could happen to other wayfarer also.

Bahasa Indonesia:

Saya merasa asing berada di komunitas yang dulu pernah beberapa kali saya sambangi sewaktu jadi aktivis mahasiswa. Malam tadi di Freedom Institute, buku terbaru Goenawan Mohamad (GM) diluncurkan. Sebagai pembahas dihadirkanlah Pdt. Martin Lukito Sinaga dan KH Husein Muhammad. Pengunjung terbagi menjadi sejumlah kelompok: orang-orang dekat GM, orang-orang yang kerja dan kesehariannya bersinggungan dengan GM termasuk pers, orang-orang yang tertarik pada keriaan dan makan gratis seperti para mahasiswa, dan orang-orang seperti saya: yang bingung mengkategorikan diri. Toh malam itu kebingungan bukan semata monopoli saya, karena banyak pihak yang malam itu seperti terhenyak membaca buku GM yang mak nyuss. Kumpulan 99 fragmen pendek (GM menyebutnya ”tatal”) yang dinamainya buku, diberi judul aneh pula: Tuhan & Hal-Hal yang Tak Selesai.

Membacanya, saya langsung teringat karya Nietzsche yang banyak berupa fragmen, meski lebih panjang (Meski GM menyebut ia terinspirasi Roestam Effendi). Model ini merupakan jalan pintas bagi ‘orang-orang kebanyakan ide’ yang seringkali ide itu muncul selewat sehingga perlu ditulis bergegas sebelum ia menghilang. Maka bentuk fragmen jadi pilihan logis. Karenanya jangan heran bila tidak ada judul bab, yang ada adalah deretan nomor meski itu bukanlah urutan.Jangan harap akan membaca sebuah buku utuh dari depan ke belakang. Saya malah asal membuka halaman dan benar saja, sensasinya sama. Tiap fragmen terpisah tapi tetap berjalin-kelindan. Tidak ada keharusan membacanya sampai selesai bahkan. Hanya satu yang jelas, buku ini memaparkan pencarian seorang pejalan tentang makna kehidupan. Dan kehidupan dalam bentuknya yang par excellence adalah Tuhan.

Di buku ini GM seperti pamer pengetahuannya akan cakrawala dunia. Seolah sudah dijelajahinya seluruh lembah, didakinya segala gunung, diselaminya selaksa samudra, demi menuliskan buku ini. Gayanya tetap tidak berubah, penuh referensi tanpa perlu catatan kaki. Gaya yang tak lekang sejak eranya ia menulis Catatan Pinggir di Tempo era sebelum dibreidel. Dalam kata pengantarnya GM juga mengakui ada tulisan yang berasal dari kolomnya yang legendaris itu.

Bagi yang khazanah pengetahuan keagamaannya minim, dijamin buku ini mengguncang iman. Meski tanpa tulisan mentereng sebagai klaim “Buku Yang Mengguncang Iman” di sampulnya seperti Da Vinci Code. Serpihan kisah dari penjuru negeri-negeri jauh pun dicupliknya: Illiad yang mengisahkan Troy (38), al-Mutawakkil khalifah Baghdad (41), 1001 malamnya Shahrazad (11), Sultan Akbar dari India (21), Musa (23, 26,27,28,30), Yesus (24), Sophokles dan Mahabharata (39), Serat Cabolek dari Jawa (52), Ratu Kidul yang juga dari Jawa (67), Yosua (88), Sherlock Holmes dan Andersen (56), Don Quixote-nya Cervantez (81), hingga Passion of The Christ-nya Mel Gibson (24) dan Babel-nya Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. GM pun membariskan nama-nama besar: Sunan Kalijaga (1), Sitor Situmorang (2), Rilke (3,60), Omar Khayam, Subagio Sastrowardoyo (4,62), Chairil Anwar (4,16,32), Derrida (6,61,96), Holderlin (7), Amir Hamzah (8,21,40), Ibn Rushd (8, 22), Ibn Sina (8), Al-Ghazali (8,31,76), Buddha (9,28), Shakespeare (9), Karl Barth (13), Tagore dan Adorno (15), William James, Roland Barthes (16), Tahar Djaout (17), Alan Badiou (22, 54), Simone Weil (21), Nietzsche (26,74,84), Lyotard (27), Nabi Muhammad (28,30), Santo Agustinus dan Rudolf Otto (28), Boris Pasternak (33), Pramoedya Ananta Toer (33,53), Brecht (36,83), Nuh (40), Al-Tabari (40), Goebbels dan Hitler (42,56), Claude Lefort (48), Baudrillard (49), Rene Girard (50), Lacan (51,54), Descartes (52), Neruda dan Walter Benjamin (53), Foucault (54), Karl Marx (54), Sayyed Qutb (55), Gadamer (55), Heidegger (29,42,52,61,67), Ilya Ehrenburg (53), Albert Camus (57), Asmuni (58), Dao dan Ranggawarsita (59), Levinas (61,85), Heraklitus (62), Vico (62), Marcel Proust (63), Cokot, Duchamp dan Jean Tinguely (64), Husserl, Basho, Matisse, Jean-Luc Marion, Rusli, John Cage (65), Kafka (66), Ibrahim (68,79), Kierkegaard (68), Allen Ginsberg (70), W.H. Auden, Ibn Arabi dan Herodes (71), Naoki Sakai, Ito Jinsai dan Kong Hu Cu (73), Angelus Silesius (74), Signorelli dan Michelangelo (78), Roberto Calasso (79), George Steiner (80), Dylan Thomas (82), Fukuyama (84), Iqbal (85), Joan Copjec (86), Nelson Mandela (87), Derek Walcott dan Sukarno (92), Rachel Bespaloff (93), Marion (95), Groucho Marx dan Franz Fanon (96), serta Habermas dan Ibu Sud (99).

Anehnya, dari nama-nama yang bak antri memasukkan kartu absen di buku itu, GM sama sekali tidak menuliskan beragam nama Tuhan seolah mereka semua sama saja. Ia memukul rata Tuhan dari berbagai zaman dan kebudayaan semata dengan menuliskan kata “Tuhan” saja. Sesederhana itu. Sebagaimana bisa jadi ia mengharapkan pembaca bukunya tidak mengernyitkan kening dan memandang bukunya sesederhana memandangi bintang yang jadi misteri langit malam. Maka, buku ini bisa jadi merupakan manifestasi pertanyaan tentang Tuhan yang telah menghantui GM –dan mungkin juga semua pejalan- selama tahun-tahun perjalanan kehidupannya.

cited from http://greatliteraryworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/goenawan-mohamad-on-god-and-other.html

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Sitor Situmorang

Sitor Situmorang remembers his Batak childhood

Wind and Water of Lake Toba


Wind and Water of this lake
remembering I still hear
their tales in silence
tales over thousands of years
about the past and
the future


wishing to understand
what childhood meant
whispers of conscience
of endless time
in the sinking seconds
drowning
spell-bound melting away
Water-weeds sway
At the very bottom

The latest poem written
on April 1 by Sitor Situmorang
Temporary translation
by Kunang Helmi

Sitor Situmorang who was born on Oct. 24, 1924, in Harianboho, Samosir, North Sumatra, is a poet, writer and journalist.

Sitor said last week that he had left the shores of his home on the northwest shores of Lake Toba as a young boy by boat to continue his education.

His parents had to come to the dock to hear the latest news of their son from the captain of the boat that plied across the waters from the school and their family house.

One of Sitor's close friends in Paris is the almost 100-year-old painter from Medan, Salim, who has lived in Europe, based mainly in Paris, since around 1918.

Here talking to Salim in Neuilly, Sitor could hardly get a word in. But Salim still can recite one of Sitor's poems by heart. A poem that Sitor admitted to having almost forgotten.

However, what Sitor has not forgotten is his attachment to the Batak country, and his childhood, steeped in Batak myths and way of life, starting in the third decade of last century:

"What I long for is an even more comprehensive exhibition of all things Batak! This here in Paris -- and I mean only the special show, 'North of Sumatra, the Batak', may be the essence of Batak culture, but to me, it represents only fragments of my memory," Sitor said.

"I can reconstruct so many things in my remembrance, but what can bring back the essence of my life spent there and childhood? The smells, the conversations, the laughter and the sorrows -- perhaps that is why I began to write poetry.

"Photos and artifacts are but the beautiful, tangible, material proof of something which has fast disappeared; in fact into many museums, collections and memories.

"How can people hope to re-construct the past glory and chagrins of the Batak people? And I am not criticizing this show at all, but it is a question of different perspectives!

Sitor said that in the past 40 years it had been the official policy of the Indonesian government to preserve cultural artifacts, yet so many material artifacts had disappeared from around Lake Toba.

These artifacts are not to be found in Indonesia, not even in private collections.

-- Kunang Helmi
The Jakarta Post, Sunday, April 13, 2008

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The Girl From the Coast (2)

Hyperion

THE GIRL FROM THE COAST
Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Novel

Beautiful and poignant, THE GIRL FROM THE COAST is another brilliant examination of Javanese culture by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Illustrating a spectrum of Indonesian religion, traditions, gender roles, and socio-economics, the novel's style is as poetic as its story is frustrating. This delicate balance of politics, social criticism, history, and artistry is what has made Toer a likely and favored candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In THE GIRL FROM THE COAST, a powerful member of the aristocracy spots a young village girl, and she is soon married to him in a ceremony that he does not even attend. And so the girl from the coast must travel inland to the city, leaving all she knows and loves behind her, to become the latest "practice" wife for the Bendoro. This move is not only a physical one; it challenges her understanding of her culture and her very identity. Throughout the novel, the unnamed girl continues to identify herself as a poor village girl from the coast (even when surrounded by servants and riches) and longs for the familiar beaches and salty sea air. During her time with the Bendoro, the girl learns much about the inequalities present in society, the effects of colonialism, and the status of women. Her two servants (one old and wise and one young and deceitful) also teach her much and arm her with survival skills. They help her, each in their own way, to see the need to stand up for herself in the face of oppression. Forced to make a final, heart-wrenching decision, the girl eventually returns home to her fishing village but finds her marriage has altered her forever.

The Bendoro himself, an intimidating figure, remains, for the most part, in the shadowy background of the book. The women and the villagers in the story, those thought to be weak, uneducated and unenlightened by the aristocracy and Dutch colonialists, are at the fore of the story. Although she remains nameless in the novel, the girl exhibits a strength of spirit that should place her alongside the most admired fictional heroines in world literature. The naïve yet strong-willed girl makes an interesting transformation in the novel: she gains knowledge and faces devastating realities but remains constant in her values and desires. She is a perfect vehicle for Toer's politics. She is "every" person, representative of Java's traditions and pre-colonial history, and she is confronted with troubling modern situations. The girl from the coast is heroic in her ability to maintain her moral center in the face of adversity. Her two servants also represent certain Indonesian responses to socio-cultural and gender inequalities. All three women are victims yet all three rise above their victimization.

This emotional tale is deceptively simple: the rich history and landscape of Java surge against the economical use of words and the sparseness of the action. THE GIRL FROM THE COAST is masterfully crafted, which is apparent even in translation. It is often dark, often witty and always thought provoking. One reading of THE GIRL FROM THE COAST is likely to inspire many trips to the bookshelf to delve into other works by Toer and nonfiction about the island of Java.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
Cited from bookreporter.com

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The Girl From the Coast (1)

"The Girl From the Coast," by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

A poor fisherman's daughter is plucked from her village to be the "practice wife" of a local aristocrat.
By Andrew O'Hehir

Pramoedya Ananta Toer is generally regarded as the greatest living Indonesian novelist, a fact I certainly did not know before reading the publicity material for his new book. But the immediacy, clarity and direct emotion of "The Girl From the Coast," the unpretentious story of a village girl torn from her family and married to a mysterious nobleman, make it a compulsively readable novel and in no way an exotic curiosity. (Even if you may feel a little lost during the discussion about whether the sea is more powerful than the characters in Javanese puppet theater. I think the answer is yes.)

In addition to his 30-plus books, Pramoedya (so famous in his homeland he is typically referred to by his first name) is also known for translating the works of Steinbeck and Tolstoy into Indonesian. "The Girl From the Coast" shares those writers' predilection for plain-spoken, salt-of-the-earth characters, along with some of the same quality of ageless folk tale or instructive moral fable. The nameless title character of this novel comes from a remote fishing village on the north coast of Java that is itself never named. Indeed her father, mother, husband and beloved servant are never named either. All we can say for sure is that the action unfolds in and around the provincial capital of Rembang at some point under Dutch colonial rule (the evidence in the book suggests the late 19th century).

If that suggests a kind of mythological abstraction, be assured that Pramoedya's characters and settings are intensely specific. The girl from the coast -- a slender, pretty but otherwise ordinary 14-year-old -- is plucked from her life of ceaseless labor as a fisherman's daughter and betrothed to the Bendoro, a local Javanese aristocrat whose luxurious lifestyle is light-years beyond anything the girl and her family have ever seen or imagined. Pramoedya's prose (as rendered here by translator Willem Samuels) is generally straightforward and unadorned, but in these early scenes he proves adept at layering light comedy atop the story's more ominous undertones.
When the Bendoro's servants ask the girl's parents whether she has begun menstruating, no one knows, and the mother's attempts to explain this concept to her daughter are interrupted when they sit on the Bendoro's sofa -- and are startled and alarmed by its unfamiliar softness.

Ultimately, of course, the bride's meddlesome family are packed off to the village and the girl finds herself alone and terribly lonely, a stranger in a strange land. At first Pramoedya's apparent message -- that village life, hard as it was, offered more rewards to an ordinary woman than this privileged imprisonment -- may seem overly sentimental, but he is finally after something more complicated.

What everyone, even this girl from a backwater village, rapidly comes to understand is that she is only the Bendoro's "practice wife" (and the latest of several, at that). For a man of his station, marriages to common women don't count; such wives are kept around until they produce children or simply cease to amuse him and are then discarded. Pramoedya's Bendoro is not a monster, just an aloof, scholarly and occasionally affectionate man taking advantage of his station in life. But for our unnamed heroine and other women like her, such temporary marriages are life-changing events. Back in her village, the girl has become a local celebrity, the subject of popular ballads, an exemplar of the idea that even the poor and obscure can rise to unlikely heights. After several years as a rich man's wife accustomed to the finest batik fabrics and gold jewelry, how can she go back to grinding shrimp paste?

Amid the novel's fast-moving episodes -- the girl must deal with palace intrigue and even assassination plots in the Bendoro's house, along with the array of comic and sympathetic characters in her home village -- there is really no answer to this question. For Pramoedya, its resolution may lie in history. "The Girl From the Coast" is apparently intended as the first installment of a trilogy about the rise of Indonesian nationalism, and the girl's extraordinary story is based on that of Pramoedya's own grandmother. Given the richness of setting and incident in this book, its generosity toward both its characters and readers, we can only hope more is to come.

Cited form Salon.com (Aug 1, 2002)

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