Burung-Burung Manyar

The Weaverbirds

Burung-Burung Manyar (The Weaverbirds) is a book written by Y.B. Mangunwijaya (1929-1999), an Indonesian architect, writer, and Catholic religious leader. The book is opened with an episode of the Javanese adaptation of Mahabarta. The main story is then divided in three big chapters: The Late Occupation (1934 - 1944), The National Revolution (1945 - 1950), and The Early New Order Regime (1968 - 1978). Written in 1981, it was one of the classical Indonesian literatures.

For me personally, it was a bit hard to start at the beginning since it uses many Javanese and Dutch terms (explained in the footnotes) that were no longer used nowadays. After a while, I started to become familiar with the terms and the storytelling style used in this book. Romo Mangun (familiar name of Y.B. Mangunwijaya) successfully brought the historical setting comes to life through his words. He brought the readers to travel back in time to where all the stories took place.

The story took place around the Keraton Mangkunegaran. The book started with the narration of feudalistic Javanese royal society way of living, where women must show their deep submission to their husbands based on the point of view of Teto (Setadewa) who grew up in the army background family, and Atik (the female protagonist) who grew up in the Javanese royal society.

The late occupation

Everything turned sour as Japanese took power in Indonesia from the Netherlands. The Japanese occupation grew strong hatred towards the Japan for Teto. He was swollen into his hatred that makes him decided to fight against the Japanese and even the newly declared nation, Indonesia, by joining the KNIL (Royal Netherlands East Indies Army - Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger), the military force maintained by the Kingdom of The Netherlands in its colony of the Netherlands East Indies (also known as the Dutch East Indies, in areas that are now part of Indonesia).

The national revolution

After the declaration of Independence Day, Teto became a lieutenant of NICA (Netherlands Indies Civil Administration), whereas Atik took her place as a pro-revolution by working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Sutan Sjahrir. Despite their growing love, they keep opposing each other's political stance. In Teto's point of view, Indonesia needs some more time to be mature as a nation before they claim their independence from the Netherlands. He detested the Republicans who seemed like a hypocrites to him, by always obeying whoever in possession of power, only to gain their own benefits through political maneuver. While for Atik, she held a principal to live free or die hard.

You have to be able to read in between the printed lines. Otherwise, you are just a mere captive of the texts - Atik

During this period, we were not only introduced by the avant garde and idealistic Indonesian intellectual who was later became Indonesian first prime minister in 1945, but also to Verbruggen, a Dutch Mayor, who had history with Teto's half Indonesian - half Dutch mother in the past. He became one of the important characters for his relationship with Teto. Even though he was described of having a foul mouth, he was also pictured to have a fair amount of wisdom in contrast to his endless love to Teto's mother.

This period was ended in the midst of the devastating result of the two politionele acties (Dutch Military Agression) that brought both Indonesia and Dutch military force much grieves and loss. As the story goes, the love between the two people also grows in the painful way.

The early new order regime

The story fast forwarded to after the Roundtable Conference, when Teto finally quitted NICA and studied mathematics at Harvard University to later come back as a computer expert. He also ambiguously told having new nationality. He became the production manager of a multinational oil company in Indonesia. While Atik, who was since the beginning was pictured as a strong will, intelligent woman, grew her passions in fauna and flora by having doctorate degree in this field.

After years passed between the two love birds and impeded by their passed between the two love birds and impeded by their different political point of view, they tried to reconcile with their unsolved love story and their pasts. In this period of time, we could see how Teto has changed so much from who he used to be. He was described as a rejected male weaverbird, who tried to rebuild his nest (life and dignity) through the changing of time after dealing with his anger and denial for what had happened.

This is one of the books that I really love. The kind of book that makes your heart full after reading it. I like the way Romo Mangun re-tell the history of Indonesia in the charming and flawless way. For the younger generation, like me, who never experienced these three periods one after the other, he successfully described everything nicely as if I was experiencing the events myself. The narration style (which I assume to be adopted from the way people used to communicate in the corresponding periods of time) really helped to live up the atmosphere.

Apart from that, I also adore the way Romo Mangun brought different perceptions of history in this book that somehow made me able to sympathize with both sides.

This book ends beautifully, leaves a bittersweet feeling that is already accumulated since the second period. However, I still feel a bit odd realizing that there were two characters in the story, Karjo and Samsu, that I thought quite important as well, but there was no closure with these characters, which made me questioning the importance of their existence in the story, other than to describe the political and society issues back then.

I highly recommend this book for those who enjoy historical literary fictions that is full of local transcendence and traditional values. The english version of this book was published by Lontar Foundation in 1991 under the title The Weaverbirds.

The homeland is there, where there is love and closeness of the hearts, where no people stepping on the other people. - Teto

Dea Putri