THERE ARE ALWAYS FIVE

It is easy, and tempting, to remember the gold-drenched past. Even if the present is actually rather decent. Yes, I know, it often may not seem so. Pandemic, race riots, financial meltdown and all that. But if you are reading this, you are probably still alive, and not too encumbered.


"One day we will return to our kingdom, Ngastinapura."


It's all a shadow-play, and we, not the images on screen, are the puppets.



The two people pictured above are Bima, one of the Pandawa brothers, and his half-ogre son Gatotkatja, a hero despite his somewhat iffy ancestry (on his mother's side).


Gatotkatja himself has not seen Ngastinapura, and he never will. He was born during the exile, and he dies in battle on the field of Kuruksetra.


The accounts of the great war between kinsmen travelled to Java long before the kingdom of Kediri, where Mpu Sedah and Mpu Panuloh put it into verse, then centuries later travelled to the Netherlands with exiles, half remembered. It was part of the fabric of their lives before the war, still shimmering in their minds long after they left the islands where many of them had been born. The characters of the story existed as memory-ghosts (hersen-schimmen), coming alive with the retelling.

At times they live in each generation. We are all them, they are all of us. We are not granted clear recognition of past events and people we knew then. But there are no permanent boundaries.


The reflection of Ngastinapura is behind us.
And remains a goal ahead.
Always.


I've only seen a few shadow plays, and often I dozed off halfway through. So how they end is "theoretical', and second-hand at best.


Tales have been told.




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