Others called on their experiences during the occupation and the revolution
to frame their accounts of working in Dutch homes, thereby both steering the
interview to a "safer" moment and emphasizing how radically colonial relations
had altered. Prior to the occupation, Pak Mulyo had worked for seven years as
a gardener for the top administrator of a sugar factory outside of Yogyakarta.
He responded to our opening question about his job by recounting instead his
experience on the cusp of Independence. He began by describing how Sukarno
provided for the starving and destitute Dutch released from camps after the
Japanese surrendered. Linking himself to the nationalist leader, he told of his
parallel generosity towards a desperately hungry Dutch man in a refugee camp,
to whom he brought an egg because he "felt sorry for him." Pak Mulyo remembered
refusing the Dutch man's offer to give him something in return, and
concluded the anecdote saying "Yeah, so that was it, working with a Dutchman