The Trouble with Nostalgia - Roy Allan B Tolentino

My apologies in advance. I mean no offense with the following observations, and I am sure I am in error somewhere, but allow me to explain.

I have always been mystified by the place the Sultan and the Kraton occupy in the consciousness of Yogyakarta. Perhaps it is because the Philippines never had a kingdom in the scale of Majapahit or Mataram, but I really am perplexed about the cult that surrounds the ruler of Java and all his trappings.

To be quite honest, every visit to the Kraton reminds me of Malacanang in Manila, the official residence of the President of the Republic of the Philippines. More than an administrative office, however, Malacanang to my mind represents the folly of power. Beyond the current shenanigans that take place behind the walls of Malacanang, the building itself contains the relics of the Marcos regime. From murals depicting Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos as the mythical first Filipino man and woman, to the luxurious furnishings, to the infamous pairs of shoes, Malacanang for me represents a time when Filipinos were made fools of by their own leaders. The late President Corazon Aquino famously refused to live in Malacanang, preferring
instead an adjacent guesthouse on the grounds, for the same reasons I have described.

And so forgive me if the pusaka of the Sultan remind me of that. When our guide explained how the carriages had been produced in Holland or England, I could not help but wonder how much those had cost and if that money could have been better used elsewhere. When we saw the portraits of the Sultan and the various mythological attributes ascribed to him, I could not help but remember how Marcos had tried to propagate a revised history of the Philippines which depicted him as a great war hero.

In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Cassius famously remarks: "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." I do not know if there really is, according to an old sociology professor back home, "a human tendency towards oligarchy," but I wonder if this nostalgia of ours simply proves Shakespeare right.