Condemned to each other
The main theme of Farid's Family Room, that is, 'who are we vis-à-vis each other?' reminded me of Sartre's play Huis clos ('closed shutters') in which it is clear that we are inescapably condemned to each other. In such bondage, we find torture and the relief of laughter, loneliness and love, abandonment and the inevitable confrontation with ourselves.
Lily Farid's particular celebration of La condition humaine or 'man's fate' is sometimes set in out-of-the-way locations, but most pertinently in contemporary Indonesia with anti-Chinese rioting and looting, with the gunfire of guerrilla attacks, and interreligious violence in the Moluccas. Even so, violence is not the privilege of the surrounding world outside, but looms in the very family room that has been booby trapped with mines and into which family members throw sticks of dynamite. Next to the familiar reaction of people sticking to themselves behind the closed doors and shutters of their privacy, we find the violence against the integrity of the individual, personified in, on the one hand, the pervasive corruption of the servants of government and their concomitant abuse of privilege, and, on the other, the corrupting influence of social climbing.
The holy cow of reputation, of what is being said and thought about oneself and one's family, with, in tandem, obscurantism and hypocrisy, all get their due in settings that strike as a run-away up-to-date style of life, with unwanted pregnancies, drugs and overdose, consumerism, and the abuse of those who do not enjoy the privilege of money and status. No wonder that the author's satires on political subjects are sour and cynical, and that her comments on life—or the absence of it—in the family room have a sense of bitterness and anger. The family room with its endless bickering and blatant egocentrism—also of mothers and fathers—is not a nice place to be. So, it comes as no surprise that the only intimate relations depicted are between a girl child/woman and her nanny, and between a grown-up daughter of a first marriage and her youngish step-grandmother.
With family members, as a rule, being out of reach of each other, the author created the space for unexpected and often amazingly powerful stirs of emotion. Another stratagem is her infusion of a mild streak of schizophrenia; people may be willy-nilly dependent on themselves, but they live with the voices of their alter-egos. Maybe it is the little girl of yore that keeps talking to the grown-up protagonist or commenting on her adult way of life and preoccupations, and maybe it is the voices of former relations or even television characters ('Daddy in the box').
Family Room is an anthology of short stories chosen from two collections of Farid's work plus a few, at the time, unpublished stories. As a publication that appeared in the Lontar ‘Modern Library of Indonesia’, they have been translated by John H. McGlynn, and provided with an introduction by Melani Budianta. As it stands, the work teems with unexpected insights and sketches, and may be somewhat bewildering for those who know the country from before the days it was fully exposed to the exigencies of economic growth and the vagaries of modern life. The picture it paints is not inviting; the way the author does it, however, is innovative and refreshing. I look forward to reading more of her.
Niels Mulder recently concluded his swan song, Situating Filipino Civilisation in Southeast Asia; Reflections and observations. Saarbruecken: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing (print-to-order ed., ISBN 9783659130830), 2012. <niels_mulder201935@yahoo.com.ph>.