Thank you, Oma, for being so inspirational

I've just finished reading Djamaludin Malik's biography written by Ramadhan KH and Nina Pane, as a result of love from his only daughter left, Camelia Malik, my mom's adoptive stepsister (Yes, it sounds complicated, it'll be explained later), as a remembrance of her father's memorable life.

Her father, Djamaludin Malik, was my mother's adoptive father, and his first wife was, no other than my adoptive grandmother, the only grandparent I ever knew. He was an entrepreneur, politician, and the first native Indonesian film producer, and my grandmother, Oma Dolly, better known as Elly Joenara or Elly Yunara, was a rising movie star. They got married in 1943.

So, in Opa Djamal's biography, parts with Oma Dolly in it are inavoidable. Beautifully written with appropriately chosen words. And I found out about some stories I never knew. Shattered and recollected pieces of bedtime stories my grandmother used to tell, when we had a sleepover at her place.


I was 10 when she passed away in 1992. Oma Dolly, the classiest woman from the past I've ever known. Right until the end of her life.

Her life was so fabulous from the beginning until the end you would think it's a movie scenario. Born on November 3, 1923, in Singapore, from a father named Michael William, an Englishman working for the English colonial government in old Singapore. Her mother, Mbah as my mother used to call her, was a priboemi woman from Jasinga, West Java. She was originally named Elly, but then people would look at her natural beauty and tell her mother she was like an English porcelain doll, and somehow she was then called 'Dolly'. As in the literal meaning. She had this kind of honey colored hair, bright hazel eyes, the skin so fine you'd think it was made from sugar icing, the body and the face so perfectly shaped like Venus de Milo, she was the real meaning of 'gorgeous'. Beauty from the past.


Of course, the first souvenir I had on her was when I was about 2 or 3 years of age, old enough to remember some vague things. She wasn't any longer that slim and her honey hair had greyed, but the rest of her beauty still could be seen. Her hazel eyes, for example, which rested as clear as they must've been 50 years ago, when she amazed the post-guerre Indonesian society with a glimpse of her precious smile.

She often resumed her life for me. She was 10, in 1933, when her mother separated from her birth father, and took her away to Batavia, the old Jakarta. Her parents were never legally married anyway. It was still illegal and inacceptable that a whiteman married officially a priboemi woman, and the latter was still considered as njai or nyai, unrespected by all before she could leave her white rich daddy and marry a decent Indonesian man.

Mbah had no other choice but to do so, after returning back to Indonesia, and fortunately, her new husband was a good stepfather for Oma. She even considered him as her 'real' father, since Mr. William went back to London after their separation and all Oma ever got from him were monthly letters and presents, but only until 1939 when the Second World War started. After 1939, communication became difficult and Oma lost all traces of her father. She only found out later, in, 1955, that Michael William had joined the English resistant force and died in a German blitzkrieg, somewhere in France between 1941 and 1943. And that she had some step-siblings living in London, the reason she went there in 1958.

If, there was no material that she inherited from her father, Oma inherited indeed the Eurasian beauty, something you can only get by mixing the race. She quickly became a very attractive young woman, and at the age of 16, she caught the eye of Mr. Wong, an Indo-Chinese movie producer, who instantly proposed her to play the major role in his movie, 'Pah Wongso Pendekar Boediman', which was released in 1940, the first detective-romanesque black and white film 100% made in Indonesia. After her debut, she starred in several big movies, one of them was 'Tjioeng Wanara', the first colossal movie ever made in Indonesia, the budget ten times bigger than any other Indonesian movie that year. She rose to the stardom soon, people was mesmerized by her exceptional beauty and her elegant grace. She received a whole lot of love letters, proposals, and became the object of secret admiration of many, and out of her admirers, she picked one, and married the young man named Basuki Djaelani the following year, 1941.

Unfortunately, their marriage happened to fail. They divorced in 1942, and then Elly Joenara, as she was known by the name Raden Mochtar, the biggest Indonesian actor at the time, gave her, went the other way, left the movie industry because at the Japanese colony era, movies were too 'Nederlandisch' and therefore banned. The only movies allowed to be produced were propaganda movies. So, Elly had to find another way to live and to pursue her love for the world of drama. She joined 'Pantja Warna', a theatre group, it was there that she first met Djamaloedin Malik. They fell in love and got wed in 1943.

After the marriage, the second for her and the first for Djamal, the couple lived the Japanese colony and the resistance era in an extraordinary way : they went around Indonesia with Pantja Warna, their theatre group, burning the spirits of Indonesians everywhere to move and resist, and to believe that Indonesia would soon pass through the long and dark tunnel of war, grief and sorrow. They relighted the hopes in people's hearts, through their arts. You could say that in some ways, artists could be good mediator to people. Communicate every idea of movement against the colonialism through art : the enemy wouldn't get the meaning because their hearts are clouded, but your own people understand.

At these difficult times, once Oma Dolly was offered by the Dutch to be their spy, rewarded with a lot of money - something hard to find at that time. She rejected their offer, telling them that even though her blood was half English, her heart, mind and soul are Indonesian, and nothing in the world could ever change that. She then mocked the Dutch by working sometimes as a messenger girl for some important Indonesian men of independence movement. Never was she turned on by anyone, maybe because she was the nicest person. Both she and her husband, Djamal, were the kind of persons everyone would love and respect rightaway. They chose to side with their fellow countrymen, and went across Indonesia to spread the message.

They lived a risky life, but their subtlety of winning situations against the enemy with grace, without having the enemy even realized their loss, were the most important weapon they possessed. The weapon that helped them survive. In between, the adventure continued until the end of 1949, when the Republic of Indonesia was fully recognized and accepted by the Dutch.

Oma Dolly and Opa Djamal, meanwhile, were still totally head over heels towards each other. They tried to conceive a child, many times, but without a result.

Their marriage was a passionate love story which would last more than 10 years, until Djamal met a charming young woman of Moroccan descendants, Farida, with whom he then had a pair of kids, Camelia and Mahdi Malik, born in 1955 and 1957. The reasons behind this was, that Djamal longed so much to have natural children, something Elly could not give him. They adopted 3 kids between 1950 and 1962, but still Djamal dreamt about having children of his own. That didn't make him prefer his birth children much more than his adopted ones, anyway. Sure, maybe deep in his heart he had some preferences, but he was so kind of a man that people never see it - he always treated all the kids with the same kindness and attention. The 3 adopted kids were Zaenal, of Japanese descendants, Yoedha, of Thai descendants, and Jade, my mother, of Chinese descendants.

But then when Farida and Djamal separated in good terms, he returned to Elly. He left her once again for a beauty named Elviera, with whom he had a daughter, Lila Sari, but again, when he separated from Elviera, it was at Elly's sides that he seeked companion and comfort. He always returned back to her. He always did. Maybe because her love for him was unconditional, her devotion to him was eternal, and even though, the passionate love they had for each other didn't remain, still the friendship and the understanding were their unbreakable bonds.


My mother experienced a good childhood. Well, Oma Dolly had always been one hell of a busy woman, she ran the production house called Persari and several other businesses, socialized a lot, and was a real society woman. And even though her attention and love to my mother were shown more by the material stuff, she loved my mother very much. In her own way. My mother always had the fanciest dresses, the nicest Mary Jane shoes, the cool girlie accessories still rare in Jakarta back then, and she annually threw superb birthday bashes.

Years passed by, Oma took care of Opa Djamal until the day he died, a warm and sunny summer day in Munich, Germany, in 1970. He returned home with her. And from that day, nobody ever took him away from her anymore.

Then, all her children were leaving childhood. They turned into charming teens and so as my mother met my father when she was 17, Oma was happy at the beginning, except when my father then revealed and found my mother's birth family for her. That was a mistake. Even a huge one. I mean, yes, we'd never regret that my mother finally got to know her birth sisters and brothers, in the contrary, that's a blessing, but the way my father announced to Oma was the mistake. Oma couldn't take it that people say her children were adopted. She always, and never gave up until she closed her eyes the very last time, claimed that the kids were all her flesh and blood. All hers. Got out of her womb.

Of course, nobody had ever been that naive to accept the fact that the children were hers. My grandmother had this kind of Western look, she might've looked good beside Jackie O, the portrait of a beautiful mixed race woman, while my mother and both her adoptive brothers are very much Asian type. My mother's birth parents, the Tan family, came from China to Indonesia to try leading a better life, but ended up in poverty and misery, due to the fact that my birth grandfather was addicted to gambling. He wasn't to be blamed : that kind of addiction kills you as bad as any other kind of addiction does.

My mother was the last of six, and my birth grandmother died on lack of care, 40 days post-natal. The little Kwat Ing was given up by her father to an orphanage called 'Sayap Ibu', meaning Mother's wing(s) in Indonesian. Oma Dolly went to the centre somewhere in 1961 and took the baby with the almond-shaped eyes home. She rebaptized her as Jade Indriani Malik, and took care of her as if she had been her own. She claimed to my mother all the time that her oriental look was due to Opa Djamal's Asian-type appearance, but soon my mother found out the truth, spilled out by people living in my grandmother's house in Djalan Ciandjur 18.

Then the disagreements between her and Oma begun. My mother ran away with my father, more because she wanted liberty above all, a thing she never really possessed, for Oma Dolly was very protective and strict to all her kids. My mother married my father without her - they sent the announcement later to her, letting her know, but they were still not ready to see her face to face.

That somehow devastated Oma. She sold her mansion in Djalan Ciandjur 18 and went across the oceans to live in New York City - one of my mother's adoptive brother, Zaenal, lived there since 1972. Her adventure in Manhattan would last about two and a half years. She liked the Big Apple, but missed her friends and family in Jakarta so much. And home is where the heart is. She returned back to Indonesia and moved to a smaller house in the east of Jakarta.

Since then, she started to suffer from complication of her diabetic problems and became half invalid - her lower body parts could no longer move. And even though she knew she had to pay attention on her diet, she couldn't take it not to consume sweets and sugar, Oma lived to eat, not the contrary as people eat to live. She loved fine cuisine, she was a good cook herself.

By then, she was still not seeing my mother. Not until, Boy, my brother, was born. I was born earlier, when Oma was about to return home from New York. She still refused to see the newborn me, but asked some relatives for pictures. Then, when Boy was born, my parents reconciliated with her. Oma had always wanted children, and there came a pair of toddlers to her daughter, she wasn't a heartless bitch who'd still say no. She finally forgave my mother and my father, giving their newborn son a name he'd still carry up to now.

So commenced the times when we'd show up at her place every weekend and sometimes me and my brothers would stay over. That was the period where I began to know her and her life saga, as told above, as puzzle pieces I now recollect and try to put in the right places (Now after she's gone, it pleases me a lot and makes me miss her stories, whenever I hear some pieces retold another way from another angle of view from Ummi Farida, Opa Djamal's second wife and mother to two of his three children. Ummi and Oma were rivals at the beginning, but ended up being somewhat sisterlike, also with Opa Djamal's third and last wife, Oma Elviera).

At the end of her life, Oma suffered a lot of severe complications. The sugar level on her blood started becoming uncontrollable and attacked her eyes with blindness and her feet with deep, unrecoverable gangrens. One of these latter then went so deep it did an irreversible damage - to the bone it dug my grandmother and destroyed her from the inside. She was hospitalized for about a month before she passed away on heart function failure.

Oma died on a sunny day, May 31, 1992. She was 69 years old, and had seen, had lived, had experienced the world, before I was even shaped inside my mother's womb. She was buried in Tanah Kusir, and at her funeral there were so many people who came to honour her the last time. People she often helped, people she knew, people who still remembered her. People I had never seen before, who appeared from nowhere to give their last salute for Elly Yunara, the old heroine of Indonesia's movie industry. One of Indonesia's most beautiful women from the past. Kompas, the newspaper, wrote an article one day after she died, and I'm so sorry I didn't cut it up and keep it somewhere to re-read now.

To all young people today, she might remain unknown. People forget her movies and her name. But to the older generation, she's not nobody. She's somebody. Ask your grandmother, grandfather or any relatives aged above 50 if they know Elly Yunara, and I'm sure most of these people would likely say yes.

But even though everyone forgets who she was and what she had done, to me, her stories would remain vivant forever. I'll tell her stories to my kids and I'll tell them to re-tell the stories to their kids, and so on. Someone, in some way, would always know about her life saga.


So long, Oma, rest in peace in eternity, and thank you for being so inspirational.