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Billy Kwan, however, forgets, or ignores, this example. Compared to Semar and Falstaff, who
revel in their comic functions, Billy is just too serious about himself and his ideas. He sees
himself as Semar, the father of all men and spirits, in order to justify his simultaneous
identification with the dalang, the creator/puppeteer of the wayang kulit, with Sukarno, the
creator/puppeteer of post-colonial Indonesia, and the archetypal Shiva, the God of creation and
destruction. His dossiers reveal how his desires for Vishnu-like power over men without the
selfless humour of Semar dooms Kwan to re-enact the injustices of Sukarno:
Here, on the quiet page, I’m master—just as I’m master in the dark-room,
stirring my prints in the magic developing-bath. And here, among my files, I
can shuffle like cards the lives I deal with. Their faces stare out at me from
these little pieces of glazed card: people who will become other people: people
who will become old, betray their dreams, become ghosts. But they wait, in
my files, to see what I’ll do with them. Charting their blind course on paper, I
own them, in a way! (YLD, 108)
Billy may identify with his wise-fool forefather, but he is finally undone by his
hopeless desire to get the world to function according to the view he considers best. Yet
getting undone turns out to be just what Billy needs to free himself from all of the frustrations
born of his desires, and to become a man of engaged but disinterested action like Semar,
Arjuna and Falstaff.
11.3.2.3. The Caste War
Related to the ambiguities of the balance of alus and kasar and the true nature of man is
the problem of the mixing of castes, which also comes up in these images of beggars and
dwarfs of both Koch and d’Alpuget. Hindu tradition has Brahma create the castes when he
creates the Triple World. Gods, demons and men are supposed to maintain their designated
places in the cosmos, even though Brahma himself violates this system when he asks Vishnu to
be reincarnated as the avatara.
The Bhagavad Gita is itself ambiguous on this question. Krishna seems to reaffirm the
role of the hereditary-based caste system within dharma, and yet tells Arjuna: ‘The four orders
of men arose from me, in justice to their natures and works’ (Mascaró, 4:13). Noting the
ambiguity of the expression ‘their natures’, which could refer either to one’s preordained caste
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