As expected, Dee Lestari novels always captivated me. I’m amazed by her ability of stringing words to parse complicated understandings into a more easy to grasp sentences. All those theories about dream world are laid out clearly so the story could easily be enjoyed. The spiritual journey of the main character that become the basic plot gave the novel plenty of room to make the twist and turn that offer me thrills.
Wait. Before I continue, I should say (again) this is not a book review. I found that most book reviews are filled with personal judgements. So I choose to share my experience in reading books instead. As this can also be viewed as a form of appreciation toward the work of the writers. And for that same reason, I’m going to erase ‘review’ category and move all its contents to the ‘journal’ category. And in this way my blog would look much simpler. The way I like it. Anyhow we need to appreciate others more so the world can be less intimidating to live. 😁
One more thing. This post may contain spoiler alert, so for you who enjoy reading Supernova series without any kinds of hints, you better stop here. FYI, ‘Gelombang’ is the 5th book of Supernova series that consist of a total six book. The 1st Supernova series was published in 2001. This ‘Gelombang’ published in 2014. Yes, I’m a late reader. Thanks to all those personal live events. Nevertheless, now, I can’t wait to get my hand on the last book of the series, ‘Intelegensi Embun Pagi’. Another FYI, as far as I know ‘Gelombang’ haven’t been translated to any other languages yet. So you have no choice but reading this book in Indonesian. But for me, unless, Dee Lestari herself willing to re-write the novel in English (or other languages), you won’t be able to get the same pleasure as reading it in its original language. ‘Gelombang’ has so many deep rooted Indonesian values that somehow quite hard to precisely catch by foreigners. Please, don’t take it personal.
Okay, now, let’s continue. There are two main things that I personally found very informative. Yes, it’s a novel but considering created by one of the front liner figures of Indonesian modern writers namely Dee Lestari, it’s obviously natural you’ll get some kind of knowledge. Not just some good fiction.
So, the first thing is about Batak tradition or should I say religion. It’s my first thorough encounter to Batak tradition. One of my best friends is Batak. But she was born and grew up in Java. And she already stated that her home is here where she’s born. More than that, it turned out that her Batak clan was not originated from Sumatra Island as most Bataks do. Her clan was descendants of a man from Makasar on that Sulawesi Island. No wonder most of her clan are Moslems. So I don’t get that many batak tradition knowledge from her, apart from few rituals and how they call each other among family members. You should understand that most Indonesian tribes never directly call names to interact with family members. I’ll tell you guys more detail about this on other post.
Through this novel I’ve just known that Batak people original religion is called Parmalim. I could easily put that structure of spirituality in the same group as Sunda Buhun and Kejawen. All of them are the most previous beliefs that were held by Indonesian native tribes. Sunda Buhun and Kejawen are from Java Island. And Parmalin is one of the ancient beliefs held in Sumatra. It’s far before Christian, Islam, even Buddhism and Hinduism. I somehow could see the resemblance structure over the three of those spiritual systems. All of these native spirituality system have a huge amount of mysticism related to their daily life activities. These beliefs contribute a lot to the local wisdoms that to some extend still reverberate in the present time even though most of the descendants of the tribe already converted to Moslem, Christians, Buddhist or other religions. This knowledge of Batak spirituality giving me a profound feeling of proud being an Indonesian. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Batak, I’m 100% Sundanese. But that’s the best thing about being Indonesian you can be feeling very attached even though you’re not belong in the tribe. Satu nusa, satu bangsa, satu bahasa. Bhineka Tunggal Ika.
Now, the second one. It’s about this dream world thing. I also have the same interest as Dee, in terms of the world of dream. Those elusive visions we got when we’re closing our eyes is just like another world full of mysteries and symbols. Taken that Dee have done her research in the subject, I got the benefits from her well-known feature as a writer. She is that one Indonesian writer who has always done her research in full gear for her novels. As a result her novel became so alive, ample with knowledge that efficiently enrich her story telling skill.
In this novel, I’ve collected few terms that catches my interest; ‘figur mimpi’ if loosely translated to English would be ‘dream figure’, dream anchor, and last but not least, oneironaut. I’ve done my little research on that last word. Not a fancy research that made you go to some unknown place somewhere in the deep of Sumatra like what Dee did for this book. Mine was just a few clicks away and a good old app called ‘Google Translate’. Oneironaut comes from Greek word that means dreamer. And in ‘Gelombang’ it has a meaning of dream navigators. It triggers my interest because I always wanted to be able to explore my dream, open up every single mysteries and crack open all those symbols presented in the dream. If possible I would want to go to someone else’s dream hehe… I know that’s very rude, close to personal invasion kind of things but yet I can’t help it. It’s still a very tempting idea. 🤭
According to the novel, if I want to explore my dream, I’ve got to understand two things to make it work. First, I got to have an object that can strongly reminds me that I’m in a dream stage. The object is called a dream anchor. That term is not used in ‘Gelombang’. I’ve just read it somewhere in some psychology books. Secondly, I have to spot a dream figure that hopefully I can communicate with to decipher the meaning of a dream. These technical stuffs about cruising a lucid dream, made me think that this is not just some pure fiction. Somehow this story reminds me of my late grandfather journal that I’ve read long time ago. In one of the pages, Mbah (that’s how I called him) wrote that he found a very same leaf he saw in his dream materialized in his pocket when he woke up. You may think this is just a coincidence, but knowing my Mbah so well, I truly believe that’s what really happened. So now you know where I got my interest concerning the dream world. As I say, all of these mysticism stuffs are always happening around us, Indonesian, no matter what tribe we came from.
Enough with this dream stuff, let’s move on to a more writing technical stuffs. Again, I’m not going to judge how she write the novel. It’s more to how her writing affects me, personally, as a reader.
A few things about her way of writing are already mentioned above. Contrast to a review about two latest novel of this Supernova series that I’ve read just few days ago. I found that the English conversations part in Gelombang is rather a necessity. Why? Because these conversations are the cause of our dearly main character decision to move to America and continue living there in New York for years. And the fact that Alfa Sagala, the main character, is not likely to mingle in any Indonesian community there. This situation made his speaking habit turn to a more American way. But if you are considerate enough you’ll be able to spot how smooth Dee turn the English conversations into Indonesian while in our head we understand that all these conversations naturally happens in English. We know all those name, beside Alfa Sagala, are not belong to those who speak Indonesian fluently. After I look those English expressions again, I understand why Dee put those in English instead of Indonesian. There are just so many expressions that is not well captured if you use other languages. And she put those English expressions in a moderate amount. She surely provide her writing not only for readers who able to understand English. In my opinion those English expressions should be understandable enough for most Indonesian readers.
To be honest I don’t really like Indonesian writers who put too many English expressions in their books that its only purpose is to give a certain class of status to the writer not to the characters. This comes differently with ‘Gelombang’. In this Dee’s novel all the English expressions presented themselves as natural as native speaker speech. Not as a form of the writer’s life style that somehow attached to the way the characters speak. What I don’t like is if the background setting is in some local Indonesian area, the characters involved are all Indonesian, and I found that there’s no need using foreign expressions in common Indonesian social interaction. I don’t mind if that mix of English and Indonesian happens in real life. But for books.., oh please…give me a break. That kind of novel I will not be able to enjoy. Even though I’m able to finish the book it always left my brain a bit of strained and a kind of heart breaking feeling at the end. Fortunately, there are still lots of Indonesian writer, like Dee, who always know precisely how to implement foreign expressions without neglecting the richness of Indonesian language.
This novel take the point of view of Alfa Sagala, its main character. But Dee can give us hints of information that Alfa doesn’t realise until it truly happened to him. For me, it’s the way Nicky always want to be around Alfa and he just stay naturally unaware. And this fact is confirmed by what Carlos said to Alfa that someone gonna have a heart break and it’s not Alfa. Being totally fixated on his sleeping issue and a hot beautiful girl named Ishtar that turn his somehow organized life turn upside down, Nicky’s kind and attentive approach is not obvious to him. At the end, he’s got caught by surprised when Nicky suddenly kissed him and realise that everything was to late. He doesn’t even get the chance to thank her for all of her kindness. And I’m being the reader, all these are so plainly laid before my eyes, my mind just scream ‘Take that! Smart ass!” 😁🤭 Yeah… that’s what Dee has gave me through her work. Only a skillful writer can do that to the reader.
To conclude this quite a long blog. ‘Gelombang’ has given me so many experiences. From enjoying the storyline to how it inflicted some memories of my own personal experiences. Overall I love it to the point I need to check out again “Akar” the more previous books, because there’s a character that should be dead on that book suddenly took an appearance at the last pages. Thank you for the experiences, Dee. You rock!!
Amorfati 
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