I admit I have forgotten how to speak proper Indonesian language. A few words escape haltingly, ungrammatically, and strangely accented when I speak it. At the same time, I am rather pleased with my command of English language. Parents also said that it is part of emancipation in the family, and they are content that I can fluently talk to them in Kupang/Javanese. Now see, I have not forgotten what home was like; what it looked like, what it smelt like, what all the food to eat tasted like. It is just the language. Somehow I think what is considered a qualification will be the one main hindrance and difficulty if I decided to go back to Indonesia. It is difficult to imagine how to reintegrate to the society with my halting Indonesian.

Some Indonesians consider me as different—meaning, out of their circle of immediate friends, some are antagonized because I am me, by the fact that my English is more English than Indonesian, while my Indonesian language is no longer too Indonesian. So the truth is my education in Singapore—which has taken most part of my teenage and adult life, has become a path of alienation of me among the Indonesians who consider themselves as true Indonesians—I am not even certain what that means. We can’t get along too well simply because we use different mediums or tools of communication. These people, I personally think, are transitional intellectuals who continually query and reject Singapore and its cultures--that means English language as part of its fabric too--while paradoxically, occupying them.

I try to find out the roots of the tension, and see several, as adapted from B.K’s lectures:
1. Existence of several different cultures in one person
2. Dwelling on the issue of high and low cultures; instead of right and wrong cultures, resulting in another consequential issue; i.e. the issue of elitism. To which extent a ‘new’ culture is to be welcome and integrated as part of culture of origin, and to which extent two different cultures are to be accommodated.
3. The complexities of the problems of cultures since a lot of instances happen whereby what is foreign becomes innate and what is original becomes alien.

posted by Graciana@Home at 11:52 am