In 1945, Nesia was born—birthed prematurely, some might say, out of youthful impatience and necessity. The welcoming ceremony was rather modest, held on the grounds of her father’s home on Pegangsaan Timur (now Menteng), with a few hundred present.
Nesia had many fathers hailing from different islands, she did, and they all had big dreams for her—albeit not exactly shared ones. Some were more nationalist while others were Islamist, some believed good decisions came from long deliberations, while others were more passionately intuitive. Some wanted a negara federal, while others believed that this country was destined to be a negara kesatuan. In the end, Soekarno and Hatta were given main custody (instead of Sjahrir who had no chance, or Wahid Hasyim, or Kasman Singodimedjo, or Ki Bagus Hadikusumo) because they were the epitome of ‘balance’: one magnetic Javanese orator who charmed the people, and the other a calm Sumatran thinker who was fluent with the elites.
Nesia’s other fathers were able to set their differences aside for a minute, because they understood something bigger, something earth-moving, was happening: they were building a whole nation from the ground up. One that had so much potential, one that would fight for humanity in every corner of the world, one that would bring colonialism down—in any shape or form. One that would be so just, she would make sure the god-given natural bounties in her land and sea benefited everyone.
They even put these dreams down in Nesia’s birth certificate.
Twenty years in, and Nesia hit her first stumbling block: a certain type of ‘cancer’ that she needed to get rid of—her new father Soeharto claimed. For a couple of years, she fought her own body so hard that she inadvertently removed not just the ‘bad cells’, but her best ones too—exiled abroad or ended in situ—these must have been parts of her brain that kept her moral compass and intellect, because for the next decades, it deeply affected the way she thought about the world.
In fact, many things happened in the following 32 years, and Nesia wasn’t sure if she was living her forefathers’ dreams anymore. She was trained to not think and to be afraid of her father; it was best to agree with whatever he said, if she wanted to stay alive. Sure, he managed to build, many still claimed he was the best builder-father Nesia ever had. But at what price? Nesia started finding her memories fuzzy, and ended up relying a lot on what her father said happened. She could swear that sometimes her father would tell her the opposite of what was true, but she learned the hard way that it was best to stay silent.
When her longest-reigning father left in 1998, she had to admit she was a little lost.
All of a sudden, her international friends surrounded her, swarming like bees, telling her what to do as she finally found her freedom. Fix your financial system, they said, take some loans to build your house, others insisted. It felt nice, being able to listen to anyone but her father—albeit her head felt loud for the first time in a long, long while.
Unfortunately, nobody reminded her about the most important piece of all: she needed to overhaul her political system. Her fathers’ friends were still around, trying to hold on to whatever pieces remained, no matter how scattered. Had she had a do-over, she would have thought through the role of parties (not the kind with music), about conflicts of interest, about cleaning her council from those with her fathers’ agenda.
She also would’ve invested a lot in reforming how she educates herself. She would’ve spent years relearning what it means to be a democracy, rebuilding her agency again as a great nation that could determine her own future, instead of being manipulated by more power-hungry fathers in the future.
Despite avoiding this difficult task at hand, things were looking good at first.
Major economic reforms took place, she even managed to introduce a commission dedicated to eradicating corruption (that’s huge!), and decentralized the hell out of her autonomy. She grew fast, and healthy too. Yes, there were a couple of hiccups in the form of financial crises, but overall she managed.
The year 2014 she reached a whole new milestone: she elected a father who didn’t come from power at all. He was supposed to be the man of the people. And boy, did Nesia’s new father build infrastructure—ambitious projects all around the country, ones that were supposed to lower logistical costs and help her grow even faster.
But all while this was happening, putting the education reform agenda in the backburner came back to bite her. She was clearly running out of time, and the window to prepare a truly great nation—one that think for itself, that was driven by the core values of humanity and justice, that cared about one another—the nation that her first fathers dreamed of, was closing.
Her people were petty, apolitical, and quick to judge one another. And they were trained to be shortcut takers, to be preman (pre-man a.k.a. manchild) who constantly looked for loopholes. They would exchange their votes for a little Rupiah, because the system forced them to give up on their true power—they failed to remember that they could flip those seats if they chose to.
The youth were distracted all the time: they were fed with content and consumerism, both taking most of their remaining mindspace. They were made to love the country enough to pay their taxes, but not too much that they would disturbed seeing those exploiting Nesia—disturbed enough to all go to the streets, angry enough to bring any unjust fathers down.
The most righteous amongst them, however, were divided. The fighters, those who were supposed to be more united than anyone, focused so much on their 10% of differences and abandoned the 90% shared mission that they had. They pointed fingers at one another, claiming the other was not righteous enough (because they didn’t put their lives at stake), for example. All while the evil ones continued scheming with one another, even when they only had 10% of their agenda in common, generously giving praises left and right, even to those without any ethical backbones left.
Her people were made to feel intimidated by brains, and trained to love the pretty, rich, and popular. They were turned into bullies who picked on people for the smallest of things, those who said something wrong that one time. They were told that loving Nesia was about speaking her language, or exclusively living in the country, instead of what they use any language for—no matter where they were. How misguided, given that Nesia’s forefathers all used Dutch as they started dreaming about independence.
Today is Nesia’s 80th birthday, and she has never felt more astray from where she was supposed to be. In three years, it will have been 100 years since 1928, the year her forefathers dared to start dreaming about giving birth to her, when her forefathers chose to be one nation instead of several, because she was worth fighting for.
Is Nesia worth loving still?
Were her fathers’ dreams still alive?
Against my better judgment, I kept failing to let her go. Every time I found a reason to, I kept meeting incredible human beings who wore their big heart on their white sleeve and made staying worthwhile. Those who didn’t even flinch when (any of) Nesia’s father(s) tried to put fear in them.
If fate could take extreme turns and courses shifted in the past 80 years, she could very much do a lot in the next 80. Nesia just needs a bunch of naive believers, much like her fathers did at the beginning of this journey of nation building. Those who looked around, and questioned the way things were run, those who tried to do something no matter how trivial and small, those who kept the fire alive for a little while.
Those who would gladly join the fight, until it (hopefully) sparked something, even decades later, even when they may not live to see Nesia’s glory.
***
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgxPJRN_LVI
Dear Theodosia, what to say to you?
You have my eyes, you have your mother’s name
When you came into the world, you cried
And it broke my heart
I’m dedicating every day to you
Domestic life was never quite my style
When you smile, you knock me out, I fall apart
And to thought I was so smart
You will come of age with our young nation
We’ll bleed and fight for you
We’ll make it right for you
If we lay a strong enough foundation
We’ll pass it on to you, we’ll give the world to you
And you’ll blow us all away
Someday, someday
Yeah, you’ll blow us all away
Someday, someday
Oh, Philip, when you smile I am undone
My son, look at my son
Pride is not the word I’m looking for
There is so much more inside me now
Oh, Philip, you outshine the morning sun, my son
When you smile, I fall apart
And I thought I was so smart
My father wasn’t around (my father wasn’t around)
I swear that I’ll be around for you
I’ll do whatever it takes (I’ll make a million mistakes)
I’ll make the world safe and sound for you
Will come of age with our young nation
We’ll bleed and fight for you
We’ll make it right for you
If we lay a strong enough foundation
We’ll pass it on to you, we’ll give the world to you
And you’ll blow us all away
Someday, someday
Yeah, you’ll blow us all away
Someday, someday
Afu's Conundrum Journal 