suryodiningratan.

Forty years ago, my mother used to live in a house on jalan Suryodiningratan, not far from the Akademi Musik Indonesia (now Institut Seni Indonesia‘s postgraduate department) where she did her study. We went through that street yesterday afternoon, trying to find the house.

We didn’t find it. Instead, we found a warung selling Burjo and stopped there. My father was really happy because after all these years, he finally found such a Burjo that tastes exactly like the Burjo he used to have around the Senisono building. Senisono, he said, used to be a cinema theatre. Now it’s a gallery owned by the current Sultan – the Jogja Gallery.

There were a lot of spots in Jogja, however, that doesn’t change too much. The Pakualaman, for example, or so my parents said, stays the same. Jamu Ginggang, just a few meters away from the Pakualaman palace, also stays the same (exactly the same tables and chairs and storefront and everything). There’s even at least one old cinema theatre, Permata, that’s still running – so the gossip that Jogja only has one cinema theatre which is the one that’s part of the 21 network is not really true. Permata will soon be showing Joko Anwar’s Janji Joni.

The first day my parents arrived here, the becak riders already started to recognize them – as part of the imagined community in memory. This started when my mother started asking Mas Tono, the nightguard at Cemeti Gallery, whether he knew people who used to live around here. Mas Tono was picking up several things from the Cemeti Studio and a becak rider was helping him out.

Because Mas Tono came from the next suburb, he didn’t really know too many people (older ones especially) around here. The becak rider, however, was an older man, and he knew all the people that my mother mentioned. When my mother mentioned her classmate Titi Djanan, for example, the becak rider immediately answered “Ah, the Minangkabau!”. Yes, Titi Djanan’s family came from Padang, and thus she’s a Minangkabau. My mother also mentioned several other people like Pak Hasan, Pak Anwar Soenaryo, Bu Nana – and the becak riders knew them all – and that Bu Hasan passed away already, et cetera, et cetera.

The next day, another becak rider offered my mother a ride – she refused because she preferred to walk, but the becak rider kept chatting with her and told her he knew she used to study here in the ’60s. When I went out of the studio to the hotel where my parents stayed, one becak rider greeted me and said that my mother went the other way. Gosh, such network of gossip. The real facebook. Hehe.

I recorded my parents conversation along the Suryodiningratan, when they were trying to find the house. But it was a calmer road and so the motorbikes were noisier (because they went quicker) and that would just ruin the whole recording I think. I haven’t listened to my recording, but the whole process made me think of my earlier work Ketok, starring my parents as well. This time they were trying to imagine a place that existed 40 years ago and now only exist in no other place than their minds.

Let’s see what I’ll do with this.