By Phan Ming Yen

It is easy to feel hungry when reading Indonesian writer Leila Chudori's novels.

Food, family meals and Indonesian culinary traditions are very much a part of her two novels, Home (Pulang, 2012), and the 2020 South-east Asia Write Award-winning The Sea Speaks His Name (Laut Bercerita, 2017). Both were translated into English from Bahasa Indonesia by John H. McGlynn, the editor, translator and co-founder of the Lontar Foundation in Indonesia.

In The Sea Speaks His Name, the protagonist, Biru Laut, wins the heart of his girlfriend by cooking instant noodles for her. Family meals are also central in the character and narrative development. The novel is inspired by true accounts of student activists who vanished into political detention in the 1990s during Presidents Suharto's regime (1967-1998).

In Home, the main characters operate an Indonesian restaurant in Paris as their source of livelihood. The book draws on actual experiences of political exiles who fled to France following a failed coup in Indonesia in 1965 which led to an anti-communist purge.

Food is more than just a literary device that serves as a reminder of home or family.

In The Sea Speaks His Name, the use of food was also inspired by interviews Chudori conducted with the abduction survivors. At the launch of the English translation of the novel at the 2020 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, she said: "Most of the time during the kidnapping, their eyes were covered… [and] their sense of smell became stronger and stronger."

As a result, the writer made Biru Laut's family a food-loving one. "From their childhood they were taught to love food and to smell certain herbs in Indonesian cooking," she added.

Born in Jakarta in 1962, the writer is the daughter of the well-known Indonesian journalist Muhammad Chudori (1926-2012), who wrote for the Jakarta Post and the Antara news agency.  She was a journalist with Tempo magazine for 28 years before retiring in 2017. She remains a regular contributor to the publication and teaches creative writing at the Tempo Institute. Aside from the abovementioned novels, she has also published two short-stories collections and written scripts for films and television.

1. What are you reading right now?
The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea by Bandi.

2. If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play or poem, what would you be and why? 
Jo March in Little Women because that's how I was when growing up: reading is a need rather than just a hobby, and writing is a passion. Also I was not quite 'feminine.'  

3. What is the greatest misconception about you? 
That I love adventures and travelling. I am actually a very homebound person. I prefer to stay at home and read, write or do gardening.  Sure, I'd like to travel once in a while—although most of my travels before the pandemic had to do with work—but essentially I am very attached to my home.

4. Name one living author and one dead author you most identify with, and tell us why.
I don't exactly identify with any one author, dead or alive. Every author has his or he own unique quality and I relate to different qualities of different authors.

5. Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it? 
No, not really. Some, if not most, writers have day jobs. I am one such writer. Unfortunately, my day job is still my priority and I can only work on my fiction on weekends. So, there is no time for writer's block!

6. What qualities do you most admire in a writer? 
Discipline.

7. What is one trait you most deplore in writing or writers? 
Arrogance.

8. Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or a piece of advice from a writer?
"Matilah kau mati
Kau akan lahir berkali-kali"

This is part of a poem written by Soetardji Calzoum Bachri for my 25th birthday. I asked his permission to use this excerpt in The Sea Speaks His Name. It became the soul of the novel.

In English, as translated by McGlynn, it reads thus:

"Die, you will die
 And be reborn, again and again…"

9. Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but I…
 …don't believe in ghosts or other mythical beings. Hence I laugh a lot when I have to watch horror movies.

10. At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy, a tragedy, or an action thriller to watch, which will you go for, and why?
It depends on my mood. However, I also work as a film reviewer so watching a movie or a TV serial is part work and part pleasure. I am partial to movies with a tragic element such as Infernal Affairs, Judou, and films by Asghar Farhadi.

11. What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite one?
In Bahasa Indonesia, berkelebat. More or less, it means 'flash,' to describe a very quick movement, but I do not think there is an English equivalent of it that expresses its meaning precisely. I don't have a least favourite word. The meaning of words depends on how we use them.

12. Write a short-short story in three sentences that include the follow three words : hantu (ghost), penyair (poet) , kopi luwak  (Luwak coffee).
Sambil menghirup kopi luwak itu sendirian di sebuah pojok  yang sepi, sang penyair menyadari betapa pandemi telah mengubah tempat kelahirannya seperti kota hantu. Gelap, berdebu.  Tanpa bunyi, maupun penghuni.

[As he sipped his cup of Luwak coffee by himself, the poet became aware of how the pandemic had reduced his hometown to a ghost town. Dark, dusty.  Desolate.]

13. What object is indispensable to you when you write?
A cup of Earl Grey tea, a fruit platter, journals where I'd write down my notes for research and story outlines, and, of course, my laptop.

14. What is the best time of the day for writing? 
When I was younger, it used to be in the night. Now I have to choose mornings.

15. If you have a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soirée, and why?
Alice Munro as I think I have not read any writer who invests so much power into words like the way she does. She uses 'simple' words, but yet is able to build such complex stories with layers of emotions. I'd like to sit and listen to what she has to say.

Orhan Pamuk as I am fascinated with My Name is Red. I think it is one of the great literary masterpieces. I have all his books, but My Name is Red is the one I have re-read.

Chairil Anwar, the Father of Indonesian Modern Poetry. I'd like to sit and drink with him and  listen to whatever he has to say about literature back in the old days. He may choose to eat in a warung [roadside foodstall] though!

16. Both Home and The Sea Speaks His Name are inspired by historical events. In your essay "Why I wrote a novel about Indonesian political exiles" for The Margins, the magazine of the Asian American Writers Workshop, you mentioned that "a novelist is a storyteller, not a historian or a politician who unleashes propaganda," adding that "the story is about the characters, the figures" and that "I am just the medium." What are the challenges you face as a "medium" balancing between history and fiction and how to do you overcome them?
The main challenge lies in one's ability to select what is essential from the endless sea of information. There is far more horror and terror in real life than in fiction. These horrors and terrors are absolutely indescribable because they are too grotesque.

What readers read are usually "softened" versions of what really happened.  Sometimes, authors just do not wish to describe the vulgar nature of truth, or maybe it just cannot be expressed.

17. What would you write on your own tombstone?
Sendiri tetapi tak merasa sepi

[Alone, but not lonely]

_____