Amba- The Question of Red by Lakshmi Pamuntjak

http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/mainpage.aspx?pdate=2017-01-15

 The Forgotten Chapter

“Is it not true that all stories exist to be written anew?” asks Lakshmi Pamuntjak in the prologue of her novel ‘Amba – The Question of Red.’  The Indonesian novel was published in 2013 under the title ‘Amba’ before Speaking Tiger India published it in English under the new title in the fall of 2016.  It is based on the swallowed and obscured historical record of the night of 30 September, 1965, when six army generals were murdered. The repercussions led to the massacre of one million communists and their sympathizers. “It’s fifty years since the massacre but we cannot look away,” says Lakshmi.

Since the Suharto regime fell in 1998, there have been systematic endeavors by writers, filmmakers and academia to publish studies of the silenced genocide. Alternative retellings, of which Lakshmi’s novel is a brave attempt, trace the black inerasable wrinkle in the history of human rights.

The ’Red Purge’ displaced and ravaged millions of people, whereas, the perpetrators and those who aligned with the powerful became rich. A CIA report describes it unequivocally, “One of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the second world war, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s.”

Lakshmi allegorically sketches the dark history through characters from the Mahabharata – Amba, Bhishma and Salwa.  It is said, “Myth was there at the beginning of literature, and it is at the end of literature, too. Better stories have never been told.” It is true that myths live on in our societies and we see lives through their prism, either pandering to them or resisting them. In a bid to escape the myth, the characters in the novel charter their course through the revolution and get embroiled in an inescapable destiny.

Characteristically, Lakshmi brings the Hindu-Buddhist rooting of Islam to light. “Folk tales and tales from the Wayang (shadow play) drawn from the great Indian epics flowed through the lives of the Indonesian people,” writes Lakshmi.  Islam in Indonesia is rooted in the belief of reincarnation, in accordance with Hindu- Buddhist way. “We in Java live with both. We are Javanese because we live with both,” says the protagonist in the novel.  Islam made the nation a Muslim majority land in the 13^th century. Before that,  people followed Hinduism, Buddhism and Animism diligently.

A world on the brink of being ripped apart by hatred and killings is vividly shown by Lakshmi from the point of view of multiple characters. If Amba is a middle class Javanese, Bhishma is elite, half Javanese and half Sumatran. On the other hand, Samuel is Christian Ambonese. His family was exiled to Holland by the Dutch, where it lived in fenced camps. Manalisa represents the ethnic tribals, the indigenous population living on Maluku islands, west of Papua. The people of Chinese descent are on the hit-list, too - their Muslim identity being a question mark in the minds of the mob.  Buru Island, akin to Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay or the penal colony of Cayenne(Devil’s island in French Guinea), is a character in itself in the novel.

Lakshmi’s lens on Buru is mirrored through an epistolary device. Buru is evocatively transformed from a betelnut plantation surrounded by blue waters to a penal colony housing 12,000 prisoners. Bhisma writes a series of letters to Amba from the barracks, hiding them in bamboo shoots under a tree, his secret vault in jail.  ‘The shinning lights of Indonesian intelligentsia’ were imprisoned thousands of miles away from the power centers during the Communist purge. Buru is painted red and stands witness to the torture of its prisoners for ten years.

Lakshmi paints the colour metaphor stylistically through the story. ‘The Question of Red’, the title of the novel embodies innumerable connotations of the dreaded orgy. To begin with, there’s the passion of the central characters - ebullient Amba and rock-star Bhishma. This desire is superimposed by the hatred of crazed people against the ‘Communist Red’. 

There are a number of allusions to poets, playwrights and historical rebels, enriching the narrative with power words and ideas of revolution. Lakshmi’s belief in art as the saviour of human souls comes across when Bhishma takes Amba to the safe haven of the Art Colony in Yogyakarta in order to escape the mayhem in the city. The idea that art and writing speak in tough times is harboured in Lakshmi’s own endeavor to stand for the truths of Indonesian history. 

Metaphors lie strewn through her narrative driving home the stories of politics, murder and anarchy. “The islands of their country were the thousand foundlings with their mouths turned towards their mother, the Great Nipples with dictator Suharto, the father completing the picture,  one family sitting at one big dinner table to purge the ’Reds’ from their neighborhood.”

Vignettes of humane persona, surrounded by gory bloodshed, save the historical drama from nihilism. Leading the way is Bhishma, the ‘Wise Man of Waeapo’, the healer tending to the sick and the injured undaunted by danger.  Salwa, Samuel and many others in Buru camps, too, execute tasks going beyond the call of duty.

Reading the novel in context of Cold War between two superpowers during that period, one would expect to find mention of the conflict, but that is not so. The author seems to have intentionally refrained from working on CIA angle and its role in adding fuel to fire. Also the character of Amba does not evolve into a strong emancipated role. Overcome by jealousy and uncertainty, she gives up on Bhishma for long years. The flame of love that they light between themselves cools and becomes more of heartburn than the fiery passion that the beginning of the novel suggests. On the other hand, the long drawn massacre leaves nothing to desire and remains exhaustive in its treatment.

Lakshmi Pamuntjak enters the hallowed hall of fame in recording yet another story of human hatred, the violent orgy of Muslims killing Christians killing Chinese killing Communists!