Sunday with Ibu Ety

Sunday with Ibu Ety

A question which you'd normally get in the office on Mondays is: "How was you weekend? What did you do?".

I am usually a bit hesitant to answer because my weekends are normally not spent going to fancy places which young people normally would. No I did not spend Saturday night partying at Blowfish; I did not have a candlelight dinner with a hot date at a fancy restaurant in Kemang and no, I did not spent it at the beach in Anyer; nor did I go for movies or shopping at Plaza Senayan.

What I did yesterday was, I went hunting for Indonesia's celeberated writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer's old house in Kampung Kebun Djahe Kober--the place which he described so vividly in his short story, "My Kampung" in Tales from Jakarta as a filthy and stinking place, where death and disease hung in the air.

Pramoedya narrated in his memoir, The Mute's Soliloquy, that Kampung Kebun Djahe Kober was the place where he lived together with his first wife in 1950. The house in Kebun Djahe Kober belonged to his wife's family. In the memoir, he wrote about his first impression of the place:

"What kind of lives did the people of this place lead that could keep them from seeing or prevent them from doing something about the sorry state of their surroundings?"

With Pak Rachmat's (whom I made acquaintance during my first trip to Djahe Kober) help, I found Pramoedya's house, located on Gang 3 (or Lane 3). The residents around there told me that Pak Pram's daughter is still living there!

The hospitality and friendliness of people in urban kampungs are amazing; they soon ushered me into the house and introduced me to Pramoedya's second daughter from his first marriage, Indriaty; referred to in his memoir as "Ety".

I was well-received by Ibu Indriaty who was amazed that I made such an effort to look for her father's old house. Pramoedya doesn't live there anymore; in his memoir, he narrated how he left Kebon Djahe Kober after his divorce with his first wife. But Ibu Indriaty told me that she and Pak Pram's second wife's family are very close and they get in touch very often.

I was thrilled to learn some of the details about their lives and how it used to be in Kampung Kebun Djahe Kober. Ibu Indriaty never got married; I did not ask for her age but she must be around 50 over years old. In the fifties, Pak Pram took his two children (Indriaty and her elder sister Puja Rosmi) and first wife with him to Netherlands where they stayed for two years.

Ibu Indriaty was kind enough to let me take pictures of her and her house. The house used to be bigger--occupying the space of three houses--but the land had been sold and what remains is just a third of what used to be. Ibu Indriaty lives there with her niece.

Before I left, I had Ibu Indriaty autograph my copy of The Mute's Soliloquy and I promised to send her copies of photos that I had taken.

It was a wonderful Sunday for me. But if people ask me what I did during the weekends, I'll probably answer, well, I just wandered around Jakarta city and stayed at home mostly.