Anglingsari Sunartadirdja had two fathers, a husband, and three sons.
Is her life defined by those men?
She told me that women need men to protect them.
Her first father was a Colonel in the Indonesian Army Ordnance Corp. Tante Yanti, her best friend from childhood, told me that she was doted on by her father. She was the cute one among their clique. One day she came to school with a pretty dress and shoes, made in the USA, a gift from her father after training in Fort Sill. Tante Yanti was envious of her.
Ibu’s father died of a heart attack while playing tennis. He was only 42. He is buried in Kalibata Military Cemetery; his pet name is Kiki Kalibata (‘Kiki’ means ‘grandfather’ in Sundanese).
Still young and beautiful Mamih, my grandmother, became widowed. Mamih had never worked a job. She forfeited medical school to be a dutiful military wife and mother. I was a little afraid of Mamih. Everyone was. She had the charisma of a mother superior: always well dressed, tidy, and punctual. Even after she was paralysed from a stroke, she insisted on scheduling her day by the minutes.
Mamih had to hustle as a widow. She found a job as a secretary and sold asinan she made. A family took them in, but not without unspoken objection that they had to share with a family of three.
Ibu recalled that many men made advances to Mamih Si Janda Kembang. Some (or many) were not gentlemanly.
Ibu told me it was a turbulent time for her. Without a man of the house, the three women had no one to provide a home, food on the table, and protection. My aunt Tante Anyi, though, reminiscences those times as a testament to Mamih’s resilience: a mother’s capacity to adapt.
Mamih married a much younger second husband. Kiki was Ibu’s second father. The only grandfather I know; a significant male role model in my life. He was Kiki Kalibata’s brother. Ibu told me that Mamih married her first husband’s brother to protect her daughters; she had heard enough horror stories of predatory stepfathers. Supposedly, an uncle won’t prey on his nieces.
Kiki worked at the Indonesian Central Bank. Ibu said everyone jeered at him when he married Mamih. Some said he wanted the inheritance from his brother. But he climbed the bureaucratic ladder.
Kiki also provided.
Ibu told me that she met father when they were in Universitas Indonesia. He was in the faculty of engineering, architecture, and she was from the humanities, German Literature. She had a boyfriend from high school, but Mamih didn’t like him because he went to a second rate private university.
Ibu took German Literature not because she was cultured or avant-garde. She needed a bachelor’s degree to get a corporate or government job. She only ever mentioned Goethe, seemed to be fascinated (or irked) by his homosexuality rather than his works. I don’t think she ever read Hessee; warned me not to read Nietzsche as it may compromise my faith in God and Islam (she was dead right on this—although Nietzsche was partial to Islam when comparing it with Christianity); avoided Marx out of Orba propaganda (and the real threat of persecution).
It was Mamih’s sister, Mbah Ies, who encouraged her to pursue a bachelor’s degree despite she had no literary interest. She wanted to take a secretarial course. Mbah Ies told her that the higher the degree the better chance she’d have. She could find a job as a secretary with a bachelor’s degree but not the other way around.
Mbah Ies went so far as to let her live rent free at Purnawarman apartment when she got married. She sponsored Ibu to travel to Germany. When Bapak was working for a state-owned construction services company that was awarded the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport Project, he was sent to Europe for a comparative study on airports. Mbah Ies bought her the return flight ticket and lent her a mink coat so the young couple could travel together.
Mbah Ies was her cool mother (as an aunt should be), virtually her godmother. She didn’t listen to her parents; she went to the University of Michigan on scholarship—even if that meant shrinking the talent pool of eligible suitors (this was the 1950s). She took library information system—not as fancy as a medical school, but it landed her a permanent job as a librarian in the WTO Jakarta office. She taught her that a woman must have her own money, in case the man cannot provide so that she can feed herself and her children.
Mbah Ies met her husband, Mbah Bob. He was a nuclear engineering postgraduate student. They met at the library. Their meeting was like out of Erich Segal’s Love Story novel, Ibu said. Mbah Ies was working as the university’s librarian; he was looking for references. Two Indonesian international students, educated in America, fell in love.
Only their marriage was not a happy one, Ibu told me.
Mbah Bob had his own company, a contractor for the Indonesian Power Company. They lived in a big house in Pondok Indah with a modern architectural design. A Mercedes, a Jaguar, and a Volvo—with carphones—in their garage.
Mbah Bob provided.
Mbah Bob slept in a separate bedroom. He only came home on the weekends. They could not conceive. Ibu told me Mbah Ies tried to salvage her marriage by adopting Arief.
I envied Arief. He’s my uncle by relations, but we are almost of the same age. He became one of my childhood friends. He got all the toys a boy could want. Nintendo Entertainment System, SNES, Mega Drive, 3DO, NeoGeo, Saturn, Nintendo 64, PlayStation. Gokarts, laser tags, pool table. RC cars and ships. Every weekend Mbah Bob would take him to Toys City and he’d pick up any toy—toys—he wanted (he always broke them, though). There was a dedicated play loft in Pondok Indah House. It was a kids’ paradise: full of toys and we could play anytime we wanted.
I think Mbah Ies’ laissez faire attitude was to promote creativity. She applauded me for making makeshift forts or stages with Arief’s bedroom. When the family travelled together, she gave us kids (Arief, me, my brothers, and cousins) each a notebook and a disposable camera. Asked us to record our experience.
Ibu warned Mbah Ies that she was spoiling Arief (and by proxy, her children). But Mbah Ies couldn’t help it. She was afraid that any disciplinary action would be seen as that he was loved less.
Mbah Ies’ life was a contrast to Mamih’s trad wife life. Mamih was the matriarch. She governed four bedrooms Penguin House in Bintaro. Bought each of her daughters a house so they could live nearby (Bapak didn’t want to, so he sold the Kenari House). Cooked and prepared meals on the table; accounted the household expenses in a neat ledger book; oversaw the Jepara furniture and crystal decorations were dustless and polished, garden manicured by the helpers; the birds and the birdcages, the koi fishes and the pond maintained.
Many of our childhood weekends were spent at her place. Mamih only had daughters, but she had four grandsons and only one grandaughter. Mamih loved that her grandchildren were friends with each other (and made sure of that). Some weekdays, chauffeured, she would pick her grandchildren up after school. I enjoyed the ride in Mamih’s E-class or 3-series. But always felt restricted by her uptightness.
Sit properly, don’t slouch. Have your meal on the dining table. Nap time, play time is over. Your grandfather is home, greet him.
Mamih and Kiki took us on vacations—the big family, all their daughters and husbands and children. Bali, Singapore, Australia (always bus tours, of course).
When Ibu died, Bapak told me that he should not have let us be ‘taken away’ like that. But without Mamih and Kiki’s patronage, and Mbah Ies’, my childhood—our childhood—would be worse. Our childhood was gray, the only colours were playtimes with cousins or videogames, reading comic books, doodling, and those vacations. School breaks meant coping with the tedium of staying home. It felt like a prison time. That’s why I love adulthood so much.
Ibu took pride and comfort that her sons were hers. She always insisted that your family are the ones who’d stick with you. Blood is the strongest bond.
Her bachelor’s degree got her a steady job in Kompas Gramedia, one of Indonesia’s publishing conglomerates. She became a journalist for a while, but couldn’t keep up with the demanding work. She was transferred to M&C!, the comic books publishing arm. The income was not fancy, but she could clock in at 09.00; chitchat with her coworkers; watch cable TV; have a long lunch at the mall; went home at 17.00.
Ibu’s last position was propriety editor in a comic publishing arm of the group. She decided which contents of the comic books to be censored: content perceived as sexual, offensive, or blasphemous. The publishing group was established by two Chinese Indonesian Catholics, the organisation had experienced backlash inevitably linked to the religious views of the Muslim majority. One of their magazines ran a survey on ‘role models for Indonesians’. The readers’ votes put Muhammad as the third winner. Blasphemy charges were passed; the Ministry of Clarifications banned the magazine (Freedom of Press was only introduced in Indonesia post 1998 Reform). Ibu, who started wearing a headscarf after her Hajj pilgrimage, represented Muslim sensitivity.
My best childhood memories is waiting for her to arrive from work. She would have brought newspapers, magazines, and comic books. Freely distributed to the group’s employees. There was also an employee’s discount in their bookstores. That was how I became acquainted with Doraemon and the entire Japanese sub-culture of manga.
She didn’t cook. Sometimes she brought home food she bought. Sometimes she fed us with her hand. She always demanded a cuddle.
She lived a simple life. So I thought. Her meagre salary supported our family of five. She was the only woman of the house—aside from the helpers. She relied on Kiki’s financial support and other extended family, plus credit card debts, to maintain our faux middle-class lifestyle. The Nimun House is a wedding gift from Bapak’s sister. Furnished with hand-me-downs. The cars were from Kiki. She complained about money. Bapak and Ibu were always fighting about money. When she was upset, she’d shop compulsively.
She once told me that she dreamed of being a writer when she retires. She imagined herself sitting in a bungalow by the beach, a typewriter in front of her. But she didn’t read much. One day, not long after Mamih’s death, she wrote a short story for a female magazine’s open call. Her submission was rejected. I never saw her write again.
Anyone who knows her knows that her worst vice was the ‘lie-down’ mentality. Trying harder was never her strong suit. When she was in university, she lived near campus by herself to save time commuting and to be able to sleep whenever she liked—something impossible to do under Mamih’s watchful eyes. She was always late. Tante Yanti told me that Ibu made the taxi wait, meter running, for an hour. But her meekness (and cuteness) made everyone forgive her.
Men like to be the hero. She justified the damsel in distress attitude.
As parents, she was the stern one when we were little. She beat us with broomsticks; threw me outside and threatened to give me to the construction workers so I had to work to earn my living like those poor children. She mellowed as we grew up. Resorted to sulking and emotional blackmails to negotiate with us.
I found bottles of Xanax when I was still living with her. She always denied (or never mentioned) going to the shrink.
Muslims have their prayers, we’re not those Westerners.
She didn’t like to be the breadwinner. She just wanted to be a comfortable middle-class mother who could take her kids to the mall every weekend. A wife’s income is supposed to be a disposable part of household expenditures. But as a wife, she had to be supportive of her husband’s entrepreneurial aspiration.
A good woman is someone who starts with you from zero. No one became an overnight success, no?
She had provided that continuing financial support her entire life. Even continued to do so in her death. Her retirement funds are still payable to Bapak as her widow.
Bapak never likes the arrangement either. He wants to be the Provider, the Man. That’s why he stayed on the entrepreneurial course, despite his architecture firm sustained ‘deficits’ for years and years—decades (he refused to call it ‘losses’–because consulting businesses don’t use that term. FYI, law firms do).
If only Sharia laws were enforced in Indonesia, there would be more opportunities for men.
Whenever Ibu disagreed with him, he’d take offense. Accusing she was being disrespectful to her husband, her imam, because of his financial shortfall.
A cautionary tale that you can share the same values as a couple and still find difficulties negotiating in the relationship.
Regardless, Ibu always told me to respect and love Bapak.
He is not a bad father. He’s not a womaniser and never beat us.
The last time I remember Ibu was happy when she worked at M&C!. She enjoyed being a mother to her coworkers, who were mostly younger. They talked to her about their personal life, sought relationship advice. When she retired, her coworkers threw a farewell party and made a parody of the bunker scenes of Der Untergang. The subtitles are mistranslated, pointing out how uppity Ibu is with non-halal food.
Retirement was the point where her condition deteriorated. At that party, she sighed and said, ‘Now I’d have to spend all my time at home.’ Her sons, except one, had moved out. Marriage and career pursuit.
Her two sons would have attained the Indonesian Dream. They were on track: bachelor’s degrees from top Indonesian universities (UI and ITB), careers as professionals in international or multinational firms, and master’s degrees abroad (Universities of London and Tokyo) with scholarships. However, they decided that religion and Indonesian family values were not for them.
Ibu could not be close to her daughters-in-law. I don’t think she ever liked any women her sons chose. She would have preferred that her son ended up with a good Muslim woman, wearing a hijab. She was blinded by motherly love to realise that good Muslim women would not want to end up with her sons.
I was told that Ibu regrets that she didn’t educate me well enough to be religious. He blamed Tias for not returning to Indonesia. She was ashamed that Pasha could only land entry-level jobs.
When Mamih died, Kiki remarried someone younger than Ibu. She was bitter about that. Commented that the new wife’s taste in dress and decorations was not up to Mamih’s prijaji standards; how the new wife’s lifestyle significantly improved after the marriage. But in the end, Ibu and Ibu Mita could meet in the middle ground. Ibu Mita took care of Kiki in a way Ibu could not—until his death, even after he was disabled by a stroke.
It seems the men in Ibu’s life disappointed her. Either by staying or leaving.
She always told me that I am the son of a nobody. Not a rich man, not a powerful man. I need to behave and be good. No one could save me if anything bad happened in my life.
Her advice was well-intended. The world is a scary place for the little people and the meek. She had the capacity to visualise extreme circumstances. She was paranoid that her sons would become drug addicts (she admitted she went to my room and read my private journals); made someone’s daughter pregnant (her sister got pregnant during college, which made life much more challenging). When I started working out, inspired by a fitness magazine, she warned me not to become a porn star (this was way before OnlyFans or the social media internet—no Indonesian starred in porn at that time; she also overestimated my capacity for exhibitionism as a self-conscious man). When I asked for Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha, she bought me but asked me not to convert to Buddhism (I don’t have to, Buddhism is a philosophy—Gotama never claimed he was a prophet or a Godman, just a teacher).
Her fears were validated when I had a head injury from a thrown rock and Tias was arrested for our involvement in tawuran (high school gang brawls), or when Pasha joined an Islamist cult.
She was also afraid that I’d be disappointed with her, for wanting things beyond her capacity to give.
I want many things. I love finer things. I want to live beautifully; to taste the butter in my mouth—like Black Phillip offered Tomasin. But I want her love. Her unconditional love. As I am.
I understand it was her belief that prevented her from doing so. She wanted us to reunite in the afterlife. Something impossible if we do not share the same faith. Jannah is an exclusive club for Muslims.
Still, I am often envious of my gay friends who can have the Millennial Fantasy realised: their mother finally accepted them, even become besties. A close friend’s mother asked his husband to call him ‘mum’. Here I am, a privileged cis heterosexual male who remains unseen.
She told me that I should visit her more. But every time I visited her, she would retire to her bedroom. She never asked about my work, my time in London; my published dissertation, my travels, my writing, my photography. All she asked were ‘Have you prayed?’ or ‘When are you going to have a child?’—even after she lost her voice.
Everyone would remember someone in their own way. I think everyone would agree that Ibu’s greatest virtue was her charitable nature. She was a feeler; pity was the strongest emotion to move her. She’d give to every beggar she met, lend money to anyone with a sob story—even when she was not in the financial position to help others.
Ibu’s life was uneventful but full of suffering. She was an extroverted individual but awkward in social interactions. She wanted a trad wife life but had no homemaking skills and had to provide for the family. She had to live by feminist standards, reluctantly, because she lived in a consumer society. She wanted to be a matriarch like her mother, but lacked the wealth and the grit. She wanted a life centred on family, but her sons are larger than life. She was proud that her sons are intelligent, but scared of their curiousity.
Her neophobia, her fear of unfamiliarity, made her unable to evaluate or reconsider the belief system taught to her from childhood. I wonder, if she dared to step outside from the cultural conditioning just for a while, would she had the chance to be happier? Was her orthodoxy predetermined or it was just a predisposition she could have transcended?
However, her friends love her so much. In her life, she rarely reached out to her friends. Her social events were dominated by family gatherings. But so many came for the funeral, even donated so much (it is Indonesian custom to give money to the bereaved family).
Despite I and Tias don’t complete the Indonesian Dream, by superficial externalities, we made it. Bapak told me that he’s concerned that ‘I still work for other people’, but I could live a comfortable lifestyle. Tias’ gaijin life is a first-world life. More than that, we are loved as we are by our chosen family. Without blood ties, they don’t need to stick with us (but they do). We wouldn’t have come so far if Ibu didn’t raise us.
For the record, I agree with Ibu that the world is a scary place. But it’d be much less scary if we become stronger, richer, and wiser.
I am not writing this out of spite. I want a record of my mother’s life story as it is—from my perspective.
I had lost her long before she died. When she died, that loss became absolute. I heard a theory that a boy who is rejected by his mother would develop a complex. I, and my therapist, suspect that the emptiness within me may be connected with my relationship with Ibu.
Some say I could work on myself to fix that. Some say I could just make a space for that void.
This is also my statement of defense. I do not owe anyone an explanation, but I want you, dear reader, to understand the nuance of our relationship.
A good friend told me that a child’s relationship with the mother is a profound one, despite the lack of understanding between them. As a self-respecting writer, writing this eulogy is a necessity. This is how I grieve.
The Nimun House feels lighter without Ibu. Before she died, I had a lingering sense of guilt that I am living such a good life while she was having it so bad. Now I am relieved.
We cannot hurt each other anymore.
