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JOURNALIST Richard Lloyd Parry has lived in Tokyo for 10 years as a foreign correspondent, first for The Independent and now as Asia Editor for The Times, London. He has reported from 24 countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, North Korea and Indonesia. But it is his reporting assignment in Jakarta that moved him the most. And in a bid to make sense of all that was happening in the troubled times when he was there he has penned the critically acclaimed In The Time of Madness. Speaking to this reviewer, Parry explained why despite covering 24 countries, he chose Indonesia for his literary foray. The journey, he tells me began in the last years of the 20th century, when he was first sent on assignment to Indonesia. For those of us who have had fortune of visiting the country, you’d know the feeling — it’s one that evokes love at first sight. Beyond Jakarta, the mind-blowing temples, the long-winding country roads all transport you back into a time that one would have loved to stay in, one that evokes that feeling of time standing still. The experience was no different for Parry, the author. One moment there was the beauty, the seemingly peace loving gentle people who welcomed him, the stranger, with open arms. Soon it would turn out to be a land of contrasts. Mobs armed with machetes taking on the police force. With all the blood-letting around him, it became almost impossible to make sense of what was happening around him. Well, it takes true courage to tell a story as heart-rending as the one that unravels in this book, but it takes even greater courage to witness the deeply moving accounts that can recreate the battlefield right before you. One of my most memorable accounts in the book is the sense of desperation that Parry narrates when he describes a mother pushing her baby through razor-wire to give the baby a chance for survival. That one episode stands out among all the others that describe the raging mobs, the gruesome state of the dead bodies and all the experiences he went through from Borneo to East Timor. What makes the book even better is Parry’s frank admittance: "....I went to East Timor, where I discovered that such an experience is never externalised, only absorbed, and that it builds up inside one, like a toxin. In East Timor, I became afraid and couldn’t control my fear. I ran away, and afterwards I was ashamed." So this book in a sense makes amends for having run away. And it does so in a critically acclaimed fashion. The Economist, the usually unforgiving newspaper, in its review said, "You could not hope for a better guide to the strange and terrible transformation that befell Indonesia in 1998." When told about the remark, Parry in true humility says after all the years that went into doing this book "at times I really thought it was rubbish, but if The Economist liked it, there must be something good about it." Something good though is under-selling the work. There are just so many things that make this book a must-read, especially for those with an interest in South-East Asia and particularly in Indonesia, which also happens to be the world’s fourth most populous nation. It explains how the fall of Suharto by democratic protestors, led to a slew of problems for the country. The hatreds and conflicts that had long been suppressed came out into the open and with all the ethnic conflicts playing up Indonesia turned into a war zone of sorts. Coupled with Suharto’s fall, was the ineffective reign of his successor, B.J. Habibie. It happened in the backdrop of the Asian economic crisis, which unfortunately hit Indonesia the worst. Then there was the whole problem in Aceh that played up in its worst possible form. And the whole problem in East Timor. It is all of these events pieced together that make the book a useful account of contemporary Indonesian history. Despite all the bleak
moments in the book, Parry now says the time for madness has passed.
There is a new kind of peace, a relatively stable democracy and an
economy that is showing signs of promise. With that, the author can
hopefully put some of the disturbing incidents behind him and take
readers on another riveting tour of some of the other countries he has
reported from. |
