Mushy Me

I just read what I wrote a few days ago on Pak Harto’s, our 2nd president, demise. Did I really say I cried? Did I say tears running down my face?

Uh oh.

Well, that’s one side of me that I don’t know what to do with. I don’t really like to show it. But I don’t like to keep it a secret, either. I just can’t help it. Anything heart-touching, then my waterworks break. Even when I was watching ‘Big Daddy’ yesterday. It was a hilarious movie, but still I couldn’t help feeling mushy when thinking that Julian, the kid that Adam Sandler took in, had to figure out what to do with his life alone, after his mother died.

I remembered when I was 11 years old. My uncle died, and because he lived with my other uncles in a small house, the wake was held at my house. Early morning before the funeral, we had a family prayer with another uncle, who was a reverend, presiding. He said beautiful things about my dead uncle, so beautiful that I had to sneak out and cried outside.

And I remembered the day when my pet chick (it was a REAL chicken’s chick, not "chick" who wears a dress) died. I was angry at my dog who bit the chick. It wasn’t really his fault, I suppose. He was just following his hunting instinct, and concluded that the chick was lunch. With horror I saw my dog ran with my pet chick clenched between its jaws. I hit the dog, and he dropped the chick. But I was too late. It breathed its last in the palms of my hands. I cried, in front of all my dogs. They were probably thinking, "Hey, why is the master crying over food? And when is lunch, anyway?"

Then yesterday I filled out a bulletin on Friendster that I got from Binsar. At one number, the question read, "When was the last time you cried?" My answer was obvious, because I shed tears only a day before when I read about the late President on the paper. Binsar’s answer was, "5 years ago."

Boy. So all these years I have been such a mushy fellow.

Sometimes it’s good, when the time was right to show some emotion or sympathy. But for most of the time, it might simply seem strange and awkward for other people.

I try to keep it to a minimum. But .. in case I can’t help it, I hope you won’t think I’m strange. Or something.

Pak Harto

I learned of the news yesterday at church. A friend showed an SMS in her cellphone. It was short, curt, and far from sympathetic. But it said the truth. Soeharto, or better known as Pak Harto, the second President of the Republic of Indonesia, died of multiple organ failure after being hospitalized for 24 days. I rechecked the news on my cellphone browser, and found that it was true.

I felt sadness as I saw Pak Harto’s bio and wake on TV. But the sadness turned into real sorrow when I opened the morning paper today, and read articles on his achievements and saw his photos. Tears ran down on my face.

What really broke me was not that Pak Harto had gone, but for all the abuse he received after he stepped down. It seemed that all the good things he had done did not matter at all.

In retrospect, I think Pak Harto was one of the most visionary of the leaders of the country. From the very beginning, he started from the most basic needs of the people: food. He worked hard to make sure that the country could produce plenty of food for its own people.

After it was done, Pak Harto moved on to building infrastructures important for making a modern country. He worked on building power generation plants, telecommunication system, and market based economy.

After Pak Harto stepped down, his successors seemed to have forgotten about building the country, and instead were more interested in working on their own credibility for the next election. And now the nation is paying for the leaders’ folly: price of basic needs is skyrocketing; corruption is more rampant than ever; even education, which was comparatively cheap in Pak Harto’s era, is becoming more and more expensive.

It breaks my heart everytime I think about how Pak Harto felt when he saw the country he had toiled so hard to build was falling to pieces.

Soon after Pak Harto’s resignation, Indonesia lost East Timor, a small province that took hundreds of Indonesian lives to be integrated  into the Republic and to build. Agriculture sector, that had been Pak Harto’s special interest, was forgotten.

Now Indonesia, which was once able to contribute 1 million tons of rice to Africa and received world recognition for her achievement in agriculture, has to import rice from other countries just to fulfill daily needs.

The most verbal people of this country had been incessantly talked about dragging Pak Harto to court for sundries of crimes. In cruel irony, university students, whose education was possible because of Pak Harto’s vision for them, turned against him.

Now that Pak Harto is gone, I felt that I should have done something in the midst all of the hate rained on him. I should have seen him and told him how many people of this country still respected him and considered him to be a great leader.

Now that Pak Harto is gone, thousands of people came to pay their last respect. If only all of them had come when he was still alive and when it was still mattered for him to know.

An article in "Kompas" relate one incident in November 2007. The writer came to visit Pak Harto in his house, and Pak Harto expressed his wish to visit  Tapos. It is a research center founded by Pak Harto whose main goal is to breed the best quality of cattle. It was his lifelong passion, and is probably his greatest heritage for the country. Being a farm boy in his youth, Pak Harto had been always closest to farming. And it was the only thing left that he cherished during the last days of his life.

During the visit, the head of Tapos facilities encouraged Pak Harto to keep his dream alive, inspite of all the negative press about him. And Pak Harto gave orders for building of more barns …

I can’t write anymore… it’s too much for me to bear …