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No Such Thing as Can't
One Man's Journey Across the Southern Seas, through Poverty and Ordeals, to become one of Indonesia's Most Prominent Bankers
By Dahlan Iskan
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Dahlan Iskan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-1923-6
Chapter One
BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS
As Karmaka Surjaudaja considers the many highlights of his seventy-four years on this earth, one stands out for him—witnessing NISP's transformation into one of the most prominent banks in Indonesia.
Why is that?
By almost all accounts, the bank founded by his father-in-law, Lim Khe-Tjie, should have been torn apart. It should have been utterly destroyed. If it were a boat, there were simply too many storms that should have drowned it. But incredibly, each time the boat started to sink, Karmaka was able to get it back afloat. Then, through some miracle he was able to fix the engine again. Eventually, by adding more "fuel"—his blood, sweat, and tears—he succeeded in getting NISP back on course to become the success it is today.
Anyone would be amazed and delighted to see NISP, after a long, torturous journey grow from a small local bank, limited to West Java only and ranked below fiftieth, to one of the Big Ten banks of Indonesia, with more than 360 branches, five hundred of its own ATM machines, more than a million customers, and assets of US $3 billion, as of 2008.
But Karmaka's happiness is multiplied many more times by this one fact; the current leadership of Bank NISP is comprised of none other than his own children, Pramukti and Parwati. This young generation has implemented its own initiatives to successfully establish new foundations for the growth, development, and modernization of the bank.
Karmaka feels blessed that he has been able to do good deeds in his lifetime. While he was battling the unceasing storms against NISP to ensure its survival, he could still guide and prepare his children so as to become the foundation of the bank in the future. Eventually, his plan and his efforts proved successful.
Karmaka is also filled with delight and pride to see his children leading NISP to new places. He never dreamed that, at seventy-four, he would see the NISP flag rise to the peak it has reached today. Moreover, Karmaka is still able to participate by visiting the bank branches and advising his children, who are now at the helm.
It is a miracle that Karmaka should be here at all. He should not have witnessed all these accomplishments. Karmaka should not have lived on this earth for so long. He should have died and been buried a long time ago. Several times, people tried to murder him. He himself attempted to commit suicide. He has been admitted to hospitals multiple times, undergoing several minor and major surgeries and, more than once, falling into a coma. Also, Karmaka suffered mentally when faced with seemingly unsolvable predicaments that threatened to render Bank NISP extinct, situations that arose not through any fault of his own, but as a result of circumstances and fate. Each time, he would suffer the mental and emotional stresses that came with having to take extreme measures, like laying off thousands of loyal employees and comrades-in-arms during the struggles to save the bank.
Karmaka often asked himself why, when one crisis was overcome, other crises relentlessly followed behind. And yet, no matter how thorny the problems he faced, how much his mental and physical capabilities to cope were exhausted, or how grave his near-fatal illnesses became, as if by some miracle, someone or some circumstance would offer him a way out and a solution.
Of course, by the time Karmaka reached his seventies, NISP had grown into a strong bank. As if by a miracle, Karmaka was indeed destined to see NISP's success. He considers this a gift from God to a person who, in his lifetime, was willing to work hard, be fair to others, use his wits and skills as best he could, and repent for his mistakes and sins. He is forthcoming about the remorse he has felt because of certain actions he took and decisions he made along the way.
Karmaka believes that, when all said and done, God was good to him. He and his wife, who has been steadfastly at his side through all the challenges he's faced, were destined to see their children, under their guidance, achieve success. The children who joined the bank, as well as the one who became a civil servant, all excelled, and Karmaka and his wife are proud of all of them. "I can see with my own eyes everything they've accomplished," says Karmaka.
In spite of being saved by good people from several murder attempts and his attempted suicide, death still threatened him. In 1996, Karmaka was given a death sentence. "One very famous liver specialist in the United States determined that I had been diagnosed too late with a terminal liver disease," he recalls.
Karmaka did his best and used all the means at his disposal to find a treatment. He traveled to the best hospitals in this world, but everyone he met told him he was past saving.
The only sliver of hope was to get a liver transplant. But Karmaka didn't want a transplant. At that time, liver transplantation was still an experimental surgical procedure, and the risks associated with the procedure were very high. "I rejected the idea. I would rather die in Bandung," he remembers.
But as his liver deteriorated and his wife and children continued to insist forcefully, he relented and had a liver transplant, which proved to be successful beyond even the expectations of the experts. That liver has functioned well to this day. However, five years after the liver transplant came another pronouncement of death. The doctor discovered that Karmaka had a severe kidney disease. There came a point when his kidneys were functioning so poorly that Karmaka fell into a coma. "Every one thought that I would die soon. They even prepared my portrait for the funeral," said Karmaka, laughing. At that time, Karmaka's children flew him, still unconscious, abroad to be saved. Karmaka was not aware of any of these events. Later, Karmaka agreed to have the worse of his two kidneys surgically removed, since cancerous cells had been discovered, and not long after, his remaining kidney deteriorated and was, ultimately, replaced with a kidney transplant.
"I, who was once arrogant before God, eventually came to admit the greatness and the blessings of God. He kept me alive after my suicide attempt and after the pronouncement of death from the two doctors for my fatal diseases. He saved me. Even after I was readied for my funeral, He gave me more years to live," Karmaka says.
"And that was not all that God did." Karmaka had faced three murder attempts, but God the all-knowing recognized who the evil ones were and took Karmaka's side. "Apparently, I was favored to live," Karmaka says.
Karmaka said that he was blessed to be saved many times from death so that he could see the result of his many sacrifices, his good intentions, his dedication, and his remorse for his mistakes.
"It seems I have also been given the chance to tell my life's story to all of you. Who knows, it could be useful as a comparison to another's life." He explains that he will tell me the candid story of the problems that almost sank NISP; he will talk about how he overcame the many problems that came his way, how he countered the threats he received, why he decided to commit suicide, and who helped to save NISP.
"I will also tell you how I had to face serious illnesses and overcame them one by one, how and why I prepared my children, how crucial my wife's role was, and how I feel now, after all the major problems have been overcome and I can see NISP prosperous and growing under the leadership of a third generation, since the founding of the bank on April 4, 1941, sixty years ago!" Karmaka concludes.
Chapter Two
THE BABY IN THE SHIP
It was 1935, and the Chinese New Year celebrations had just ended. A mother and her ten-month-old son left their home village of Hokjia in Fujian Province in southern China and traveled to the port city of Xiamen (Amoy). The mother had decided that, once the New Year was over, they would follow the path of many others before them—they would xia nanyang (go down to the southern seas); in other words, they would immigrate to the hope-filled lands of Southeast Asia. The mother's destination was a faraway land that was later to become Indonesia.
The mother sailed to this faraway land for the sole purpose of following her husband, Kwee Tjie-Kui, who had left the village in Hokjia two years earlier. Since his arrival in Indonesia in 1933, Kwee Tjie-Kui had lived in the city of Bandung, situated in the western part of the island of Java.
The mother never talked in much detail about the journey that took more than ten days, except for the fact that the baby was fussy throughout the whole time. The sea gales, which were normally strong in February, would indeed have made the journey very uncomfortable, especially for a mother caring for a ten-month-old baby.
Just before the ship neared its destination, the port of Sunda Kelapa, now Jakarta, the baby came down with a serious illness—diarrhea. The baby's temperature was abnormally high. Because of the diarrhea, mother and child were refused entry, even though her husband was already at the port for the long-awaited reunion. The Dutch authorities refused entry for anyone with diarrhea and fever, for fear of epidemics. Mother and child were detained in the ship docked at the port for days. The father pleaded with the authorities for leniency but failed to move them.
Several prominent members of the Hokjia had accompanied the welcoming party from Bandung, and they also made efforts to convince the authorities to allow the mother and baby to disembark but with no success. Seeing that all efforts had failed, the father made the heart-wrenching decision to have his wife and baby return to Hokjia on the next available ship. He himself would accompany them and return to their old village in Hokjia, China.
But what if the baby did not recover from his illness, or worse still, were to die during the journey? With much anguish, the husband and wife came to the conclusion that they would have to live with the consequences, including the possibility of sea burial, though leaving the body of the baby at sea seemed unthinkable. There seemed to be no other way out.
In the midst of such desperation, Mr. The Tjie-Tjoen, the most prominent person in the Bandung Hokjia community, came to the rescue. He had been Kwee Tjie-Kui's guarantor when Kwee had first arrived in Indonesia. He tried to negotiate with the Dutch authorities and offered a higher amount of guarantee money—500 Dutch guldens, which was a large sum of money. The effort succeeded; the mother and sick baby were allowed to disembark and to continue the journey to their final destination, the city of Bandung.
In Bandung, the baby, who was named Kwee Tjie-Hui, gradually recovered and grew up healthy. The years passed, and when he was thirty-two years of age, KweeTjie-Hui became a naturalized Indonesian citizen and changed his name to Karmaka Surjaudaja.
"Yes, that's the only story of my childhood that my mother would tell me," says Karmaka, reminiscing about the fantastic beginning of his life's journey. "Mother never revealed the suffering she went through then," he adds.
Karmaka's mother remembered well the name of the big ship carrying her with the baby; it was the Siliwangi, indicating that this name had been popular even during the Dutch colonization. The name Siliwangi was given to king Sri Baduga Maharaja of the Pajajaran Kingdomin West Java, a tenth-century kingdom that existed long before the colonization of the land by the Dutch East Indies Company.
Karmaka's mother set out on her journey in accordance with a long-held Chinese tradition of embarking on a significant change in one's life right after New Year's Day. As to why his father made the journey ahead of his family, Karmaka explained that it was because his father was the headmaster of a school in Hokjia.
It is characteristic of Chinese communities, wherever they are, to give priority to the education of their children. The Hokjia community in Bandung was planning to set up its own school for the community's children. At that time, in 1933, the only available schooling in the land was in the Dutch educational system, but the Dutch authorities did allow the Chinese communities to establish their own schools. In Bandung, the Chinese wanted to establish a quality school; thus they needed to import the best teachers from China.
"At that time, Father was asked to come to Bandung to be the headmaster of the school," said Karmaka, recalling his father's story. Kwee Tjie-Kui was attracted by the offer, which was better than the meager pay he earned for the same job in China. Furthermore, the request to move to Bandung came from a person of Hokjia provincial origin, someone who was famous for his very successful businesses in Bandung. This was Mr. The Tjie-Tjoen, the very person who would later put up the large sum to guarantee Kwee's wife and baby Karmaka when they arrived. "To come to Bandung, my father left behind my mother, who was pregnant with me. Therefore my father did not witness my birth," says Karmaka. "He was already in Bandung."
"The importance of education is also the reason that my elder brother, who was then three years old, was left behind in Hokjia, China, in the care of my grandmother's family," says Karmaka. "It was customary then for school-age children to be left behind for the sake of education. When I was fifteen, we got news that my older brother in China had died at the young age of seventeen, which of course meant that I would never have the chance to meet him."
At the time that Karmaka's father was appointed school headmaster, there was already a Chinese school in Bandung, but it was of a different Chinese provincial origin. The Hokjia community wanted to establish its own school, named Xin-hua Xiao-xue (New Chinese Elementary School) located on Gardujati Road. Years later, the Hokjia school system would expand to include middle and high schools, established at a larger complex on Cihampelas Road, at the northern outskirts of Bandung.
Karmaka could not know very much about the pain of immigrating, since he was only ten months old at the time. Nor, when he was an adult, could he get much from his parents, who were reluctant to talk about the past. But based on scanty information and a few remembrances, Karmaka gathered that, upon arrival in Bandung, the family was given lodging with other newcomers in makeshift housing at a coffee processing factory in the Kebonjati area.
What Karmaka remembered was that his father was headmaster for about five years in the Xin-hua School. After that, when Karmaka was three years old, a younger brother was born, and the family moved to the town of Cibeureum, near the larger town of Cimindi along the main road leading to Bandung. A textile factory had hired his father to be its director of operations in the town of Cibeureum.
"My father was a hard worker. The factory owner was impressed by this and asked my father to change jobs and move there," says Karmaka. The move to the big new textile factory job would be accompanied by an increase in salary. Karmaka's father accepted the job since he had to take care of a growing family—his wife and two sons in Bandung, as well as the son who'd stayed behind in Hokjia, China.
Chapter Three
THE GIFT OF FIFTY CENTS
After Karmaka's father accepted the position of director of operations at the facility in Cibeureum, the whole family moved to the little town at the western outskirts of Bandung. The family lived within the factory compound itself.
Karmaka was supposed to attend kindergarten at that age, but there was none in the town of Cibeureum, and going to Bandung for schooling would have been impossible. Commuting between Cibeuruem and Bandung would have cost a lot of money without a motorized vehicle in those days. "If I had gone to a Bandung kindergarten, I would have had to ride a horse cart every day, which would have taken about an hour each way and would have cost a lot," Karmaka explains. "Therefore, I was homeschooled for kindergarten, and my mother was the teacher." As a result, Karmaka attended neither kindergarten nor first grade at a formal elementary school.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from No Such Thing as Can't by Dahlan Iskan Copyright © 2011 by Dahlan Iskan. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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