SAKDIYAH MA'RUF

A Childhood to Remember (Part 1): Staying Home but Learning Comedy and Shaving Legs (!)

My name is Sakdiyah Ma’ruf, Indonesia’s First Muslim Female Stand-up Comic and this is series of my story, how I got into comedy, breaking boundaries, and beating the odds!

Comedy was never on the bingo card that my parents set out for me, but I have always been an avid comedy fans since I was little.

I was born and raised in conservative Arab descent community in Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia, where a future for girls means having a relatively decent education, namely doing great in high school without expecting to continue to university, marry a decent man within the community, and continue working from home setting up small business of bakery, batik and sarong, or body care (especially perfume!), or be a full-time wife and mom. This is of course not bad at all, despite the limitation. But things were a bit different for me growing up.

I always consider myself extremely fortunate to be exposed to various cultural and artistic expressions since I was a child. I learned mostly from books, television programs, and my parents’ storytelling, having been prohibited to go outside the house by my parents—except for school and doing simple chores—similar to most of the girls in my community—my entire childhood and adolescence. I know, sounds like patriarchy strikes again, yet while this is true and still true, I somehow benefit from staying at home reading, listening to music, watching quality TV programs, almost like we benefit from our time at home during the pandemic. Can you imagine? 17 years of staying at home without the distraction of the internet and social media! I am writing while thinking, wow, I could have done better then.

Regardless, I think I have done enough, I did well at school and learned more than most of my friends learned. I subscribed to a famous girl magazine at that time, GADIS Magazine, who taught me how to be smart and empowered girl, to fangirl boy bands, and most importantly to shave my legs and armpits before going on a date, tips that I practiced more than 20 years later to prepare for my wedding. Feminist reading the article, please don’t blame GADIS Magazine for teaching girls to shave, at least they did not sell whitening face cream when I was growing up.

This is also around the time that I was first exposed to comedy through TVRI, a government television and a propaganda machine of New Order government at that time, which somehow made it to slip in its programming some quality programs like Sunday drawing and painting class for children (Rest in Art, Pak Tino Sidin!), or puppet show si Unyil, or a show about farming and agriculture, Kelompencapir (okay, this is not actually children shows, but I like it!), and rich varieties of comedy shows! For the millennials in my blog, perhaps some of you remember D’Bodors, a Sundanese comedy group from West Java, Srimulat, an East Java-Central Java comedy group standing the test of time and remain famous to this day, Guyon Maton from Yogyakarta, Mbangun Deso from Yogyakarta, and monolog talk which included comedy sometimes by legendary quiz master and host like the great Koes Hendratmo and Bob Tutupoli. I watched all of the programs religiously and for the first time learned the rich traditions of comedy in Indonesia with a vast array of topics.

One thing stood out from most of these shows, especially ones presenting skits on stories of the poor and poor communities, that is satire as resistance. I did not realize it back then, but this truly instilled fire inside of me.

To be continued…