Satu hari, mungkin.
Madura is a place ignored all too often in discussions about Indonesia. And when people do mention the island, floating off the northeast corner of Java, there’s usually a caveat of some description: ‘the visitor can see such-and-such a thing on Madura, but that’s about it. There’s not much else to do’. That attitude is a fallacy: there’s plenty to absorb on Madura; it simply requires finding.
Madura is not Madeira in the Azores, and it’s not Madurai in India.
Thus, one day never, EITM will write a book about Madura. The research and drafting stages are well underway, and the results will most likely appear, probably not.
Folklore, history, culture, characters and snapshots of Madurese life will be the focus; nothing else. The reader will have no ‘in’. And that’s the way it should be: Madura is a fascinating place, but one that requires effort to understand and explore – ideally, any book about the subject would straddle the line between accessibility and obscurity to pique people’s interests but still leave them with the feeling of stones left unturned. But we at EITM fully admit our limitations and have no idea whether we could succeed in such a venture.
Whatever happens, if you, classy reader, are one who’s keen to fully explore Indonesia, don’t give Madura a wide berth. Even if it’s somewhere on your c-list of places to go, or you somehow end up there by mistake, be sure to walk around a bit; since it’s such an unexpectedly intriguing island, turning up with no preconceptions is probably the wisest course of action. Start off in Sumenep and work west from there.