Home is a not a place, but a feeling. There are also people who believe that you can find a home in a person. But what happens when that someone leaves?
Rain Chudori provides the answer in Imaginary City. To be exact: she leaves clues and trails so you can find a home in the city, where someone can be lost and lonely despite (or maybe because of) its hustle and bustle.
The structure of the book itself is very special. Cooperating with Manual Jakarta, the book is accompanied by a map and list of places where the story happens and memories linger. The selection is solid, too: from the hip but homey coffee place nestled in the South, traditional market, classic gelato parlor, to an old-time port in the North. Readers can follow ‘she’ and ‘he’, the two unnamed characters, in their journey: of falling in love, dwelling in the past, and not-necessarily moving on.
The female character (I’m pretty sure it’s Rain herself) often feels lonely in the city. She often says that she’s living time differently, but to me, it’s more like she is experiencing life differently.
Imaginary City is imaginary because it presents a different point of view of the city, too. Those who have lived too long in Jakarta know too well that the city can be a quite pain in the ass. It’s not even a city, some say, it’s just one big kampong. But in the book, Rain Chudori successfully lures us to some spots in Jakarta, where loveliness and memories lurk, waiting to be found by whoever willing to.
Rain’s prose has a simplistic and elegant quality that just stays in your heart. I admit that some parts of the story might be cheesy and repetitive, but nowhere in the book is an emotional blandness that stands between a good story and a great story. As a prodigal young writer, Rain has fulfilled the prerequisite of great writing according to Nobel Literature winner Kazuo Ishiguro: to make the readers feel something, to deliver emotions and not just showcasing talent.
Rain paints Jakarta in a different light, and that fact alone is enough to take this book out from the store and carry it with you in a commute or while wandering the city.
If one day Jakarta dies, these words carved on its tombstone would probably be: Here lies a city drenched in loneliness and memories, in its chaotic mess and routines, in longing and wishes, in love and pains.
Among all, I thank Rain Chudori for reminding me of the fact that the city is worthy of our love.
The review is written in English because the book is in English and I don’t think I can deliver the words as well in Bahasa Indonesia.
Devina Yo 
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