My Lonely Nights in Bandung

My Lonely Nights in Bandung

Everyone was looking nervously at the gathering clouds in the sky today. Some of my friends who live a distance away from the city have already prepared a change of clothes and toiletries, in case, they get trapped by the traffic again like what happened on Wednesday. Friday traffic is typically worse than usual, even on a normal day here in Jakarta. I always have problems getting cabs on Fridays. And when it starts pouring heavily, all the ingredients of a perfect storm are there.

Yesterday I was finally able to read my 2000 word article, "Sukarno's Bandung" which was published in the March issue of Jakarta Kini. The hotel people managed to find a copy from their store for me. I was pleasantly surprised that the editors left every word I wrote intact but was a bit disappointed that they didn't pick the best shots from the many hi-res photos of Bandung that I submitted to them.

Instead, they published a picture of the Parahyangan Highlands which I snapped with a very high-shutter speed on a moving train, through a rain-streaked window. It didn't turn out that bad in glossy print though--in some way, maybe it did capture the cool-green mystique of the Parahyangan hills.

Researching for the article was a lot of hardwork. I had to read up a few account of Sukarno's life, Ibu Inggit's biography, historical documents about the Asian-African conference held in Bandung in 1955, and countless articles about Bung Karno in Indonesian. The challenge was to squeeze every interesting fact I had into 2000 words without making it sound too dry and academic for a glossy expatriate magazine. Now, having completed my tribute to Sukarno and Bandung, I can finally put these irrational obsessions of mine to rest--at least for a while.

I think I am guilty of not posting any of my pictures on my blog. Well, I'll try to put this feature length article together with my unpublished pictures on my website someday--another item on my long list of to-dos. And not forgeting the other one that was published last year: "Pramoedya's Jakarta"--about Jakarta in the 1950, as seen through Pramoedya Ananta Toer's collection of short stories, "Tales from Djakarta".

Now that I'm spending most of my time in KL, I don't think I can find the inspiration nor the inclination to write more feature-length articles. For my Sukarno/Bandung article, I checked into the historical Grand Hotel Preanger in Bandung (which Sukarno himself had a hand in designing during his early days as an architect) for 3 nights to complete my research and to finish up my writing.

No matter what I told people, no one believed that I spent the three days and nights visiting prisons and graves all over romantic Bandung--also known as the Paris of Java. People thought that I took leave to snuggle up with some nubile Sundanese damsel there. Sigh, maybe I have my priorities all wrong...