TRANS-SUMATRA HIGHWAY

The Great Traveling Road Show

The recently-completed Trans-Sumatra Highway runs the length of one of the world's largest islands-a distance of over 2,500 km. The journey from Bakauheni in the south to Banda Aceh in the north is truly one of Indonesia's great travel experiences, both for the stunning scenery you pass through and for the people you meet along the way.
            However, the trip can equally become a nightmare of frustrations and uncomfortable conditions. Much depends on careful preparation, on having enough time, and on your response to the inevitable delays and minor irritations which all travelers experience in Indonesia. Patience and tolerance are invaluable qualities when traveling here, and will help ensure that your journey through some of the wildest and the least populated regions of the country will be an experience long remembered.
            Only as a test of endurance should you take the highway straight through all the way from Jakarta to Banda Aceh. It is possible to do this-the journey takes about 60 hours and costs $70. The old days of untold delays caused by collapsed bridges and washedout roads are over. Today, the highway is paved, though your journey could come to a screeching halt if a landslide occurs, especially during the rainy season. But you will not be delayed for long. Maintenance crews show up promptly, as the highway is too important to the national economy for it to be closed more than a few hours.

Setting off: Lampung

Setting off from the shout, the first leg of the Trans-Sumatra Highway runs 99 km from the Java-Sumatra ferry landing at Bakauheni, on the island's southeastern tip, up to Bandar Lampung-the capital of Lampung Province. Leaving the ferry landing, the road climbs up around Mt. Rajabasa, giving fine views of island-strewn Lampung Bay. Strands of clove trees line the hillsides, distinctive clumps of conical light green foliage.
            A little over 60 km from Bakauheni, the road drops down to the coast, giving a tantalizing glimpse of Lampung Bay, its bright blue surface broken by several steep-sided islands and fishing platforms hovering over the water like giant water-spiders. Houses on stilts line the water's edge, separated from the road by a thin strip of mangrove swamp. A rail head heralds your entry into the provincial capital, and in a short while you find yourself among huge warehouses and docks.
            The next stage of your Trans-Sumatra journey northward takes you 385 km in 9 hours to Muaraenim, through foothil plains skirting the eastern edge of the Bukit Barisan mountain range. The road cuts through rubber and oil palm plantations and fields of corn. There are lots of river crossings-all rivers flow eastward from the Bukit Barisan to the sea.
             Stunning emerald-green sawah by the roadside are dotted with huts where watchmen stay to keep wild animals at bay. Your bus might have to make several stops to let long "coal trains" by. The red-tiled raised wooden houses, some sitting on ironwood logs two meters off the ground, are traditional Lampung or South Sumatra rumah limas, formerly fastened with ropes, not nails.

South Sumatra and Jambi

The highway continues northwest out of Muaraenim, crossing the Lematang River several time before reaching Lahat. Just after Muaraenim, you get a panoramic view of the Lematang River againts a backdrop of a primary forest. In the early morning and late afternoon, heards of water buffalo and cattle compete for road space with buses and trucks. Look for an unusually shaped mountain, Bukit Serelo-a bare, finger-like projection on top of a steep-sided hill, standing apart from the foothills of the Bukit Barisan.

              Lahat is the place to get off to explore the Pasemah Highlands. However, if you get off the bus here, getting a good seat for the next stage of your journey is a matter of luck. The highway nort of Lahat offers plenty of swaying curves and, if the weather is clear, glimpeses of the Bukit Barisan range to the west. This is landslide country during the rainy season, but bulldozers quickli clear the road. Coffee is grown on the steep hills and a rubber plantation stretches for several kilometers by the roadside. The next town is Tebing Tinggi ("high embankment"), which sits above the Musi River-one of the largest and most important rivers in Sumatra.

              The highway the straightens out, and you speed along to Lubuklinggau, on the junction of the main road west Bengkulu. The tin-roofed houses whiz by your bus window with monotonous regularity for the next 248 km until you cross a bridge over the Merangin River, just outside Bangko. You are now in Jambi Province, and a sideroad to the west from Bangko leads you into the dense jungle and tea plantations of the Kerinci-Seblat National Park around Lake Kerinci.

              The next stage , 92 km from Bangko to Muarabungo, seems to take no time at all. Muarabungo is the jumping-off point for Jambi, a long 212 km to the east.

              Outside Muarabungo, the bridge over the Tebo River at Telukpanjang offers a view of a riverside mosque. Fifty km further on, the wide Batang Hari River provides irrigation for extensive sawah and you are now in West Sumatra. Along the roadside, you begin to see your first Minangkabau style roofs.

West Sumatra

After Kiliranjo the scenery at last improves as the highway winds up into the Bukit Barisan mountains. Here are stunning limestone formations (called "karst towers") and sawah which go right up to the edge of the jungle. The tall, white trunks of the primary forest match the pale white outcroppings of limestone. In places, the vegetation grows right from a vertical cliff! The first of the karst towers, small but impressive, rears up on your right at Sungai Langsat. There are five larger ones ahead-awesome oval, dome and stupashaped freaks of nature. During the rainy seasons there are frequent landslides, and your vehicle might have to stop for a couple of hours while bulldozers clear the way.

              Having passed through the mountains, you enter a more hospitable landscape of rice fields, small Minang houses and hillsides covered in ferns, before entering a gorge leading into the busy commercial town of Solok.

              The next stretch, 53 km from Solok to Padangpanjang, follows the banks of the Sumani River north to Lake Singkarak, a huge and immensely scenic crater lake. The highway hugs the eastern lakeshore all the way to a bridge over Umbilin River, which drains Lake Singkarak.

              At the northern end the lake, the highway rises to offer some good views before cutting north and east through fertile rice fields to Padangpanjang. To your right is Mt. Merapi, an active volcano which sometime emits puffs of smoke, and Mt. Singgalang. Both are about the same height-just a bit under 2,900 m.

              Break your journey at Bukittinggi; this is the place to spend a few days recuperating. It's about halfway up or or down the island, and there are lots of good hotels, restaurants and pleasant sidetrips to be made in the area (see WEST SUMATRA).

              After Bukittinggi, the next leg of the Trans-Sumatra Highway is a grueling 500-km run up to Prapat-the gateway to Lake Toba and Samosir Island, in north Sumatra. It's a long trip, about 15 hours, and if you can afford the time, it is better to break the journey in Padangsidempuan or Sibolga, so as to cross over the Bukit Barisan mountains again in daylight.

              The road is paved all the way, but it's narrow and there are lost of curves. Even with a good driver, the crossing can be hair-raising, as you twist and wind up the mountains pass, barely missing oncoming lorries and coaches. Fortunately, there's not much traffic on the road and the coach can't go much faster than 40 km per hour.

              Try to be awake at the town of Bonjol, home of the famous Muslim leader of the Padri wars, Iman Bonjol. There's a large, sabre-wielding statue of him in town on a horse-look to the right. Just out of Bonjol, there's a monument marking the equator.

              From Bonjol the road climbs up to Lubuksikaping, then descends into a long rive valley with rice fields to the right. There are no more steep descents but plenty of jungle-clad gorges as you wind your way down to Muarasipongi and Kotanopan, where your eyes are soothed by rice fields dotted with neat little huts and bridges by the river. You are now in North Sumatra.

Nort Sumatra

From Muarasipongi, the road follows the Batang Gadis River past Kotanopan. The Purba Baru village area here is the center of a huge pesantren or Islamic koranic school, the largest in Indonesia, with students from all over the country. Hundreds of tiny huts house boys, aged six to twelve, who spend their primary school years here.

              Traditional Minangkabau houses are very few now since you are in Batakland. The people of this region are Mandailing Bataks, forcefully converted to Islam more than one and a half centuries ago.

              Panyabungan is a crowded market town which bustles with activity on Monday, market day. Gaudy becaks,vegetable-laden housewives, and motorized becak mesin all add noise and color to the market scene. As you leave Panyabungan, you see tranquil white mosques set in the middle of rice fields. A stretch of brick factories follows, then the large town of Padangsidempuan greets you by nightfall. This is a good place for an overnight stay, or a change of bus for the one and a half hour drive to Sibolga.

              Aside from a few hair-raising bends, the next stage, to Prapat and Lake Toba, is a pleasant 5-hour ride. The first part, to Tarutung, takes about 3 hours, past roadside markets and denude hills with isolated stands of pine. After an hour or so, a pass below Mt. Sibualbuali (with a large hotel) marks the division between the Muslim and Christian Bataklands, and churches begin to replace mosques along the roadside.

              It's a short half-hour hop on a straight road from Tarutung to the busy market town of Siborongborong. A little way further on you start winding down to Lake Toba past spectacular rice fields and impressive graves crowned with figures of wide-eyed men on white stallions, elders in adat costume, and traditional Toba Batak houses-including one almost big enough to live in. The massive sepulchre on the right, a short way off the road past Balige, is that of the Batak ruler Raja Tano. From here the road winds around lakeside hills to emerge at Prapat.

              From Prapat to Medan, the journey takes 4-5 hours. As the road climbs up from Prapat, there are magnificent views of Lake Toba. Then the road winds down through the mountains on a long, gentle slope to the sea via Pematangsiantar and Tebingtinggi. Lush rice fields and estates of rubber and oil palm line the road, while churches are gradually replaced again by mosques.

The final leg: Aceh

The long, 600-km ride from Medan to Banda Aceh takes 14 hours. There's plenty of good scenery, but the only logical place to break up the journey is at Bireuen, about two-thirds of the way up, for a side trip up to Lake Tawar. At Sabat, 17 km out Medan, the road crosses a wide river and the traffic starts to thin. The road now passes large oil palm plantations and ageing rubber estates. Keep an eye out for a superb mosque on the left just before Tanjungpura. The scenery alternates between broad rice fields (some stretching two km from the road), coconut groves, single and triple domed mosques, large rivers, bridges over estuaries overgrown with mangroves and nipah palms. Canoes, small boats and houses parched on stilts crowd around the estuary bridges. Further ahead are the grass-covered foothills of the hazy Bukit Barisan range.

              The town of Lhokseumawe, which is set a couple of kilometers off the highway, boasts huge banks, government buildings, shopping centers, satelite dishes and five-star hotels and restaurants alongside small, prosperous "downstream" area of small open shops. Back on the highway heading out of town, you can see several large LNG storage tanks, and flares from oil wells.

              Traveling further into the province of Aceh, you will see more the girls wearing the kerudung or jilbab, the Muslim head scarf which leaves only the face exposed. These girls attend Islamic schools. Mosques here are often roofed with ironwood shingles.

              throughout much of Aceh, the Trans-Sumatra Highway follows the tracks of a long-abandoned Dutch railway. Though much of the tracks remain, most of the bridges have fallen into the river.

              On the last leg the highway, the road leaves the rice fields and coastal towns to cut across the northernmost section of the Bukit Barisan mountains. There are lots of curves as you ride over hills covered with grass, scrub; and later you pass through tall, deserted pine forests. Then, mercifully, the bus stops swaying as the road straightens out to follow the river and fertile rice valley which leads to Banda Aceh at the northernmost tip of Sumatra.

FOOD

The Art of Sumatran Cooking

As the 17th century traveler Sir John Chardin noted, religion-as well as history and geography-has always played an important role in determining a people's diet. And so it is in  Sumatra. Pork is the major dietary barrier separating the island's Muslim majority from the Christian minority. Christian Bataks around Lake Toba and elsewhere in North Sumatra eat pork (sometimes also dog). and in their village settlements they often keep pigs. For Muslims, however, the pig is ritually unclean, and may only be eaten if one is faced with starvation.

             Muslims nevertheless enjoy many other meats-including the flesh of buffaloes, goats, ducks, lambs, chickens and fish-as well as eggs, fruits and vegetables. Since the 1970s, however, many Sumatran Muslims have developed an additional concern for whether or not the meat they are served is halal-slaughtered according to Islamic law by cutting the animal's throat while uttering the name of Allah.

              History and geography are also important, of course. After centuries of trading contacts, Sumatran cooking now reflects influences from all around the archipelago (Java, Manado, Bali) as well as from abroad (India, Middle East, China, Holland).In the North Sumatran capital of Medan, for example, you will find several dishes that show a distinct Indian and Arab influence alongside the usual Indonesia dishes. This can be seen in the use of dried seeds and aromatic spices such as coriander, cumin, fennel, cardamom and cinnamon in the preparation of goat dishes. Gulai kumah and gulai bagar are two goat curries which are rich in flavor, but unlike native Sumatran dishes not particularly spicy.
              Near the coasts, seafood features prominently on most restaurant menus. One of the most popular dishes in Palembang, South Sumatra, is empek-empek-a fish dumpling (sometimes also stuffed with egg) served hot with a bowl of spicy sauce made of chili, garlic, dried prawns, palm sugar, soya sauce and vinegar. In addition, Palembang is known throughout Indonesia for the quality of its kerupuk (deep-fried tapioca crackers flavored with seafood and spices), since the kerupuk made here have a higher proportion of fish or prawn than those produced elsewhere in the archipelago.

Some like it hot!

Sumatra has many regional cooking styles, however the best-known is undoubtedly masakan padang-the fiery-hot cuisine of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, named after the provincial capital of Padang. Padang-style restaurants are found throughout Indonesia, and a number of Padang dishes have achieved nationoal and even international popularity. Today, the famous meat dish known as rendang is served in restaurants as far afield as Tokyo, New York and London, and can be found in almost every Dutch town.

               Rendang is usually made with beef, cut up into cubes and cooked in coconut cream with a spices mixture of garlic, shallots, chillies, turmeric, galangal, green ginger (all finely ground), lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, turmeric leaves and salt. Special care and attention are required during cooking so the mixture does not curdle or the pieces of meat disintegrate. One the coconut cream reaches boiling point, the heat is reduced and the cooking continues until the mixture thickens. When finished, the rendang sauce turns to a rich, dark brown residue, but the pieces of meat should still be intact and slightly crisp on the outside.
               The prolonged cooking and the spices, especially the chilles, preserve the meat, and it is common for rendang to be taken along on long journeys, such the pilgrimage to Mecca, Rendang is then both reminder of home and a handy dish that saves time-as no cooking is needed apart from boiling the rice to eat with it! Solicitous Sumatran mothers cook, pack and send it to their children studying or working in the outer islands. If you eat rendang-and you should be sure not to miss it-be warned not to put a whole piece in your mouth at once. It is far too rich and spicy to be eaten whole. Break off a small part, then fold it into a spoonful of rice if you want to enjoy it. One should treat all spicy meat dishes with similar respect.
               Padang restaurants, wherever you find them, have a unique way of serving their dishes which never fails to intrigue visitors from abroad. There is no need to order-soon after you sit down, the waiter arrives at your table with an array of small dishes precariously poised along both arms, and deposits them all on the table. You eat whatever you fancy from among these many dishes-sampling  the curiied eggs, fish, vegetables, chicken and meat, knowing you will only be charged for the number of pieces of egg, fish, chicken or meat that you eat. The sauce is free, and there are stories of skinflints who take a spoonful of sauce from each dish to flavor their rice to have a cheap meal!
               Experienced Padang restaurant-goers know exactly which dishes go well together, and make their choice accordingly. Those who are less experienced my find they end up with a plate full of clashing flavors. If in doubt, ask the proprietor for a nasi raes. This is a plate of white rice with several bits of meat and vegetable on top, sprinkled with gravy and serundeng (grated coconut, roasted with peanuts) and topped off with a kerupuk. It generally ends up being cheaper than getting the whole smorgasboard.
               As is the custom throughout Indonesia, you eat with your right hand by compressing a bit of rice, meat and curry together with the tips of your fingers and pushing it into your mouth. Forks and spoons are also often provided now, but it is very bad form to stick the spoon you use for eating into the dishes of curry. Use a separate spoon for this!
               The normal evening meal for a middle class family consists of four or five dishes and rice. These may include one or two meat dishes-say gulai ayam (curried chicken soup) and dendeng (sun-dried spicy beef)-as well as a vegetable dish, such as cucumber salad, and a selection of condiments such as sambal (chilli paste), pickles (acar) and  kerupuk. The rice supplies the bulk of the meal, and its blandness is ideal for absorbing and combining the flavors of the various dishes.
                Of course not all Padang cooking is hot. Try opor ayam (chicken simmered in corander and coconut cream), ayam goreng (crisp fried chicken), or-a dish that all foreigners like-pergedel (meat and potato croquettes). Other dishes are prepared with only small amounts of chilli, such as gado gado (vegetable salad with peanut sauce), and sate. The latter is found all over Indonesia and consits of pieces of meat marinated in spices and placed on bamboo skewers, then grilled over a bed of charcoal and served with sweet-spicy ground peanut sauce.
                A special type of sate prepared in Padang needs a chapter all by itself. It consits of pieces of heart, tongue and tripe boiled in finely ground spices-coriander, cumin, galangal, turmeric, ginger, garlic, chili and shallots-plus kaffirlemon leaf, lemon grass and salt. The meat is then cut into small pieces and threaded onto skewers. The broth of the meat is thickened with rice flour to make a pale yellow sauce. Sprinkled with fried onions, sate padang is a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach!
                Vegetarians will delight in the variety of tempe dishes found in West Sumatra. Tempe is a kind of soybean cake prepared from boiled beans which are allowed to ferment, a process that takes three days. The finished product is firm and compact-the beans tightly bound together and covered evenly with  a light coating of white mold, with an aroma reminiscent of fresh mushrooms. Tempe is a very cheap source of high-quality protein and is crunchy and tasty when fried. It may also be curried or stir-fried with vegetables, potatoes and chilies.

Drinks and snacks

Beer goes very well with most Sumatran dishes-the high-quality Bir Bintang and Anker produced in Indonesia is brewed according to traditional Dutch methods. The religious prohibition against imbibing alcoholic beverages does not command universal observance in Sumatra, and foreigners drinking beer generally do not cause offense. Locals, however, usually prefer to drink weak plain tea or iced water with their meals.

                 There is, incidentally, one locally produced food which is mildly alcoholic. Sumatrans are very fond of between-meal snacks, and one of the favorites is tapai, sometimes spelled tape. Sumatran tapai is prepared from boiled or steamed black glutinous rice. Once the rice is cooled, it is sprinkled with a special yeast called ragi tape ; two tablets are needed each kilo of rice. The rice then is placed in a basin with a lid, and wrapped in cloth and left in a warn place for three or four days to ferment.

                 When it is ready, the mixture is slightly effervescent and has a port-like fragrance. It is usually served with lemang-white glutinous rice cooked in a bamboo container lined with young banana leaves in thick, salted coconut cream. (Surprisingly, tapaialso goes very well with vanilla ice cream!). It is available everyday in central Sumatra, but is especially popular during the fasting month, and around Idul Fitri (the fastive celebration of the end of the fasting month).

                 Another popular snack specific to the region is dadih (buffalo yoghurt). It is sold in a small bamboo container and served with emping-glutinous rice flakes rinsed with boiling water to soften them-topped with freshly grated coconut and brown palm sugar. It is very filling meal. Dadih is sold in almost every kedai or lepau (foodstall) all over the island.

On the road

When you travel by bus in Sumatra, foodseellers swarm around at every stop and bus terminal, calling out their wares. In their baskets are hard-boiled, salted duck eggs, tasty maize fritters, crispy fried banana slices (rakik), pieces of chopped sugarcane, and a variety of sweetmeats in banana leaves.
                 Practically every bus stop in Sumatra has one or two local specialities, and the same goes for train stations. Local women who are traveling on the buses will often buy a selection of these as gifts (oleh-oleh). When they visit relatives, it is unthinkable to arrive at a house empty-handed-one must have something to "open the door," as the say. There are always children around, and small gifts for them are always warmly welcomed.

The all-purpose banana leaf

Banana leaves, which can be found in abundance everywhere throughout the archipelago, are indispensable in all kinds of situations. They are tough, but when heated, are pliable and easily folded. They are mostly used to wrap food for steaming or cooking over charcoal, and as a wrapper for take-away food bought at a kedai or lepau. Small items and vegetables bought at the local market, such as tapai, bean sprouts or chillies, are usually wrapped up in banana leaves.

                 At a local lepau or kedai (foodstall), banana leaves may also serve as disposable plates or plate covers. They meet many needs for which we in the West use cling-wrap or aluminium foil. May they never give way to plastic which cannot be disposed of easily. Banana leaves are bio-degradable and a renewable resource!

LANGUAGE & LITERATURE

Court Malay to Bahasa Indonesia

Sumatra’s great size and cultural diversity is reflected in its wealth of languages, which range from the elegant and elaborate court Malay still spoken in the former palace centers of Palembang and Riau, to the rapidly vanishing dialects spoken by a few coastal, boad-dwelling  orang laut  (sea nomads). Most of Sumatra's languages are closely related, and belong to the huge family of Austronesian languages which stretches in great island arc from Madagascar on the African coast to Easter Island in the easters Pacific.
                northern Sumatra is dominated by the 1.5 milion speakers of Acehnese, who surround a much smaller pocket of Gayo speakers. To the south, around Lake Toba, lie the Batak heartlands, with their many Batak dialects, some to different as almost to constitute separate languanges. The most widely-spoken dialect is Toba Batak, followed by karo, Angkola, Mandailing, Dairi, Simalungun and Alas. Four million Minangkabau speakers the second largest linguistic group in the island are found in  the fertile highlands of West Sumatera, while moving farther south, the provinces Riau, Jambi and South Sumatera are home to numerous dialects of Malay. Rejang is spoken in parts of Bengkulu, and Lampung is spoken on the southern tip of the island. Several distinct languages are found in the four island groups along the west coast of Sumatra-Simuelue, Nias, Mentawai and Enggano.

                Attached like a single-hued lining to this linguistic coat of many colors is the Malay language-for centuries the lingua franca of the archipelago, and forerunner of the national language, Bahasa Indonesia. Spoken as a mother tongue by about 11 million Sumatrans, Malay is indigenous to the east of the island but has spread throughout the archipelago as the language of trade and islam, superseding local languages as a literary and courtly medium in the kingdoms of Aceh, West Sumatra And Riau.

                When Sultan Iskandar Muda of Aceh coresponded with King James I of England in 1615, he wrote in Malay, not Acehnese. At the other end of the social scale, Malay has long served as the language of the market place in Sumatra's cosmopolitan port cities. the first Malay phrasebook for foreign merchants, printed in Amsterdam in 1603, contains sample conversations for purchasing provisions, weighing pepper and extracting funds from a recalcitran debtor, as well as colorful phrases for driving a hard bargain.

Traditional literature

Traditional Sumatran scripts can be divided into two types-those that trace their origin to a south India script, and those that derive from a Persian-Arabic script. The earliest example of the latter is an Old Malay stone inscription from 7th century Srivijaya (Palembang). The ravages of the tropical climate have left no traces of texts on more perishable materials from this period, but the Batak and Lampung scripts also belong to this indic group, and are still in occasional use. The arrival of Islam led to the development of a modified from of the Arabic script known as Jawi-used to write Malay, Acehnese and Minangkabau until the early decades of this century.

                 Manuscripts from Sumatra come in all shapes and sizes, and use bamboo, tree-bark, palm leaf and bone as well as paper. Sumatra's most important literature is written in the Malay language. Prose works include histories and romances; tales of the Prophet and Muslim heroes, like Alexander the Great (known in Malay as Iskandar Zulkarnain, the "two horned"); and theological, legal, moral treatises. The Hikayat Raja-raja Pasi, which relates the coming of Islam to the north coast of Sumatra in the 13th century, is the oldest known Malay history.

                The two main genres of Malay poetry are the narrative syair and the pantun. The fourline stanzas of the syair with their a-a-a-a endrhyme are believed to be the creation of  Hamzah Fansuri, a mystic poet who lived in Barus in the 16th century. The pantun is a quatrain with an a-b-a-b rhyme in which  the first  couplet  contains a veiled allusion, the meaning of which is usually elaborated in the final couplet. Written literatures also  exist in Acehnese-in prose (haba) and poetry (hikayat)-and in Minangkabau, where the most important epic is the Kaba Cindur Mata.

                In Sumatra, as in many parts of Indonesia, the dividing line between written and oral literature is blurred, for in semi-literate societies texts were usually composed and written down to an audience. Professional Sijobang singers in West Sumatra are still in demand at weddings, circumcision ceremonies and other feasts, where recitations of the adventures of Prince Anggun Nan Tungga last all night. (Sijobang performances are now also marketed on cassettes.) Sumatran peoples have a rich stock of folklore, including proverbs, mantras and animal fables-the mousedeer being the hero.

                One of the most intriguing written traditions of Sumatra are pustaha, the bark books of the Batak. These concertina-shaped books are concerned solely with magic, divination and medicine, and were used as aide-memoires by apprentice sorcerers during their period of study with a Batak priest or dato. Amongst their contents might be oracles for reading the entrails of a chiken, or for divining the portents of the time of day of a child's birth ("a boy-child born at a certain moment will die in war or of smallpox; if it is a girl, she may die of suicide," etc.) as well as recipes for love philtres and poisons.

Modern literature

By the beginning of the 20th century, increasing Western influence manifested itself in a growing popular literature in Malay. Medan became a center for the publishing of "penny dreadfuls;" the melodramatic romances, adventure detective booklets owing much to the stories of Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle.

          In the 1920s, when Balai Pustaka-the Dutch colonial government publishing house in Batavia-began to issue novels in Malay, the earliest works were by Minangkabau writers. Many novels centered on the cultural clash between the modernizing influence of Western education and the strictures and arranged marriages of traditional Minang society. Both in the period before Independence and afterwards, Sumatran writers have been in the forefront of modern Indonesian literature.
               Armijn Pane's Belenggu (Shackles), published in 1940, has been hailed as the first Indonesian psychological novel, and poets like Chairil Anwar and Rivai Apin were influenced by T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden.  Yet the homeland of Sumatran writes often shines through their work-from the forests of Mochtar Lubis' childhood, which from the backdrop to his novel Harimau (tiger), to the images of Lake Toba which permeate the existentialist poetry of Sitor Situmorang.