Entah kenapa tadi malam mimpi tentang salah satu pentolannya Bagito, si Miing (lupa nama aslinya, kalo salah berawal dengan Dedy…), trus jadi inget masa-masa SMP. Mimpinya sih dia itu lagi nari jawa (ngga ada hubungannya kan? namanya juga mimpi, suka aneh gitu, trus ada yang bertanya-tanya, siapa yang sedang menari itu, lantas aku jawab dengan cepat, “itu si Miing Bagito!”

Dulu waktu Bagito masih nge-banyol di radio SK, aku termasuk fan yang setia, tiap malam sambil sebelum tidur dengerin radio SK, yang kebetulan dekat jaraknya dengan sekolah SMP ku di bilangan mayestik. Pokoknya radio favoritku waktu itu memang SK (singkatan dari apa ya? lupa, pokoknya K nya itu Kawan), seingatku banyak pelawak dan penyiar dari radio ini yang saat lepas dari SK cukup sukses di bidang infotainment.

(Aku sudah lama tidak tinggal di Indonesia, jadi banyak lupanya, maka ada bagusnya menulis-nulis masa lalu di blog, siapa tau blogger yang lain bisa mengingatkan)

Selain radio SK, kalau untuk merekam lagu-lagu, bagusnya merekam dari radio Sonora (frekuensinya ngga jauh di samping kiri radio SK), kenapa? (more…)

Actually I wrote this on: 24th September 2004, but it’s been in draft and never been published. So I decided to put it here so that anyone can read a little bit about my childhood in Pondok Pinang.

I never feel tired to write about the past, some piece of memory that I have to save it from the present and the future.Things, places, costums, persons are changed, slowly or rapidly but fortunately our brain is still able to store imagine of the past.

So I am still rebuilding as hard as I can, a story, a picture from the past that I think it’s beautiful. Jakarta was a village and he was beautiful until he get’s crowded. I grew up in Pondok Pinang, South Jakarta, a piece of neighbourhood with good and working people.

My parents decided to move from Grogol where they lived in my grandma’s house to Pondok Pinang, a small house own by my “pakde” (uncle) Sarwono (the elder brother of my dad). The house is exactly in jalan Haji Naimun and there are exactly two houses one beside the other.

Pakde Ono and his family live in a big house (House I) , me and my family lived in the smaller house (House II). Between them is connected through a garden that has a Rambutan Tree in the middle of the pathaway. In front of our house, Bude (aunt) Nur, own a children play ground (taman kanak-kanak or TK), so you can imagine that I went there during 3 years. I just have to open the house’s fence and cross it and I was already inside the school.

My house, as I can remember, had 4 rooms, 2 rooms for us and two others for the assistants, 1 kitchen and a lounge, close to a dining room. Me and my brother slept with my mom, while my father in the other room that was connected with a door. One day, when he snoared, I was woke up and thought there was a tiger inside the house, so I told my mom about that and she’s just didn’t explain anything. I was so scared.

Pak De ono has 6 children, so we usually played with my cousins. Mbak Vitri, the smallest of them was my best friend. I hardly separated from her.

In front of our house there is a small garden but there was a Nangka tree’s, Delima’s trees and many more plants. The best is the Rambutan tree in front of Pak de Ono’s house that has been giving so many fruits of Rambutan during her life…..She is the godest of Rambutan…Her fruits are so sweet…

Once, we take up a basket up to the tree and we tied it with a good rope. Oom (uncle) Toto started picking up fruits and put them in the basket and later on he passed us the basket down, when we empty it, he will pulled the rope again to took up the basket and started picking up fruits that he could.

There are so many memories in my head that I don’t know how to put it here.

Pondok Pinang was a village in the past time. I remember that my neighbour still have a soil floor, just like many Batavia’s traditional house. But it was a warm house, sweet and traditional, we use to played in her terace in the afternoon.There were a lot of alleys beside the houses that connected the neighbourhood with others.

My brother’s hobby was searching new alleys and neighbourhood. He was proud of his search every time he found new ones.

Once, my brother, my cousin and I went out far away from our house. We lended a bicycle from a worker that was working in my uncle house, I ride it with my cousin, while my brother used his own bicycle. We ride and ride and ride, until we got lost.

When we asked a person that passed near us, he told us that we were near Bung Hatta’s grave yard (Mr. Hatta was the first vice-president of Indonesian Republic), that means that we were really far from our house. We were in Tanah Kusir, so soon we went back home taking a grand avenue so that we didn’t get lost again.

About five hundred meters from our house there was huge football field, but it was in the lower level of the street, the soil is red. This field was always full on the weekend whenever there was a football game. In my holiday, I went down to the field with my friends, but when we went up, I couldn’t climb, it was difficult, because there were no rocks to hang, it’s pure red soil, plus I was a fat girl! I thought the death was near me…luckly my friends managed to help me from up stair. I dirtyed my clothes with the soil, some scars in my knee. My mother was mad when she saw me in that condition, unfortunately it was saturday and I forgot that she didn’t work that day….

I also remember that my brother who collected so many books, opened his own library (”Taman bacaan”). He charged anyone who borrowed his book. He really succed with the business as he was only had about 8 or 9 years old (I don’t quite remember).

My best friend when I was a kid named Lia, she lived very near to our house. I spent a lot of time in her house. We played anything that we could play. We used to use little wood blocks to build a kind of our “house”. Her mom and mine are best friends too.

We used to play war game with my brother and my cousin mbak Vitri. My brother used to recruit me to play as a soldier. Or we sometimes build a “disneyland”, we use chairs, tables and convert them as car, horse, a n y t h i n g that we could imagine…. We used candy’s paper as entrance ticket.

We used to play until late at night when we were on holiday and we would not stop until my aunty Nur gave the order to stop.

Me, my brother and my cousins used to play fire-cracker (petasan) in the play ground field whenenver there was a fire-cracker time (normally in Ramadhan month), they (my cousins) even fabricated their own fire-cracker! I was just a little girl, I know that it was danger, but I could not separate from them.

As pakde Ono’s house is so big, sometimes we stayed in one room and my cousins start to tell us scared story, we were mas Ade, mas Ifi, mas Ihsan, mas Budi, mbak Vitri, my brother Hadi and me. Sometimes we got so scared and we started running all over the house in the middle of the day, of course you couldn’t be the last one to run….or “something” would take you out from the group!

Our favorite movie was Walt Disney production, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Guffy, etc. We watched E.T, Flash Gordon and I loved to watch “The sound of music” (sometimes Vitri and I sang the film’s songs when we were playing together! crazy, isnt it? I don’t remember how many times we watched that film…)

My brother who was very creative person, used to make a shadow teather. I really enjoyed his story.

Anyway we used to fight by anything. I ended up crying and wanted to hurt him! he always won me.

I had a great time….great friends and neighbourhood.

Inget ngga masa-masa kecil kita kalo ke warung sama ibu atau pengasuh kita, hm ya….pasti kita dibeliin permen, coklat, mainan, dan macem-macem deh…

Kalo dulu, rumah orang tua gue di Pondok Pinang, di jalan Haji Naimun, jadi warung di mana keluarga gue membeli sembako tuh ya di warungnya Pak Isa. Warung pak Isa (almarhum) sangat lengkap, di depan warung terdapat beberapa tempat beras dari kayu. Ada bermacam-macam jenis beras dari Cianjur sampai beras pera. Pas di atasnya tempat beras, di mana terdapat papan-papan kayu, tergantung sandal -sandal jepit, biasanya merek Swallow. Nah kalo di sebelah kiri toko, terdapat semacam lemari kaca yang berisi makanan cemilan, biskuit Regal, Roma, Berondong, dll. Di atas lemari-lemari tersebut terdapat toples-toples berisi permen, sugus, coklat, rengginang, dan sebagainya. Di dalam warung, masih banyak barang-barang dagangan lainnya. Seluruh keluarga pak Isa biasanya bekerja di warung, berganti-gantian.
Kalo dulu gue paling suka beli coklat merek ayam jago, coklatnya sih tipis, enak dan murah. Aduh kalau bapak gue sih biasanya belinya cuma rokok merek gudang garam dan terkadang nyemil berondong. Kok suka ya? cemilan keras gitu?

Selain jajan, gue sendiri suka juga membuat es mambo di rumah. Kalo kebetulan bi Ani buat kacang ijo, gue buat juga versi es mambonya. Selain kacang ijo, es mambo bisa dibuat dengan susu coklat atau berbagai syrup. Masukan susu coklat, kacang ijo atau syrup di plastik, lalu diikat dengan karet dan masukkan di frizer. Tunggu sehari dua hari, jadilah es mambo.

Ngomong-ngomong soal es, jaman dulu ada berbagai macam nih, yang sering lewat sih ya es dung-dung (menurut sepupu gue mas Pito), karena untuk memberitahu orang-orang bahwa dia sedang lewat, di gerobaknya di ikat gong, bunyinya “dung-dung-dung”. Dulu harganya cuma lima puluh rupiah.

Kalo lagi nonton sepak bola di kampung di belakang rumah sama temen-temen, gue suka beli es dung-dung. Tapi yang paling enak sebenernya tuh es potong…rasanya lebih nikmat. Es potong itu hampir mirip dengan es mambo. Namun es potong itu lebih padat, dibuat di plastik yang memanjang. Nah kalau kamu membeli, penjualnya tinggal memotong satu bagian, kira-kira sepanjang enam centimeter, lalu ditusuk dengan lidi di salah satu sisi potongan untuk memegang es itu.

Nah kalo jajanan waktu SD beda lagi, lebih bervariasi. Ada mie goreng atau bihun yang dijual di plastik, harganya cuma seratus rupiah. Ada juga sate bakso, sate usus, bakwan.

Di luar sekolah, kadang-kadang berjajar pedagang-pedagang kaki lima yang menjual kerang-kerang hidup, baju-baju dari kertas untuk anak-anak perempuan, mainan-mainan dari plastik, parasut, dan sebagainya.

Bayangin kalo ngga dikasih uang jajan sehari…menderita deh liat yang lain jajan.

Hm….ga berarti sih kita jajan tiap hari, suka juga kok gue bawa nasi dan lauk pauknya, jam istirahat, makan bersama di dalam kelas dengan Asye dan Evita. Paling nikmat kalo makan rame-rame. Biasanya si Zaki, karna ga suka maen bola, dia tinggal di kelas juga jam istirahat, akhirnya malah gangguin kita yang lagi makan….

Kalau di rumah nenek gue, di grogol, di jalan semeru, jajanannya lain lagi. Biasanya suka lewat tukang es woody dengan menggunakan sepeda. Teriakannya ya “Es woody..!!!”. Kalo es woody gua suka beli yang di cangkir plastik, bukan yang batangan.

Kalau pagi-pagi suka lewat tukang roti (hmmm….), teriakannya “Bot boti….!”, mbah Lala (ibu dari nyokap gue), suka beliin kita roti coklat dan moka untuk sarapan pagi.

Kalau di Ciputat, di rumah nyokap gue, roti yang paling enak tuh roti merek Lauw, rasanya ngga kalah dengan roti-roti bakery modern yang dijual dengan mobil. Namun penjual roti Lauw ini agak iseng orangnya, “cunihin” istilah sundanya. Roti Lauw tuh tradisional banget, masanya empuk tapi berbobot, rasa dan keharumnya tidak ada bandingnya. Selain keluarga gue suka membeli roti tawar, roti coklat, keju dan mokanya enak juga….

Ada lagi Holland Bakery….hm..ini baru top deh, ngga lama muncul juga Amsterdam Bakery. Cuma sekali-kali aja beli di sini, kalau kebetulan berhenti di Hero. Rotinya Hero yang “milk loaf” juga minta ampun enaknya.

Wah tapi kalau specialis roti tuh sebenernya kakak gue, tidak ada hari tanpa roti, makanya dia suka dipanggil “Pak Roti”….

Jajan itu kadang-kadang memang lebih nikmat daripada makan di rumah, kadang karena porsinya sedikit jadi pengen lagi, ngga pernah puas.