Introduction

state of mental exile

In January 1958, Tjalie Robinson sent a letter to Mary Brückel-Beiten, an Indische woman who, through demonstrations and cookery books, had for years tried to introduce the secrets of the Eastern kitchen to the Dutch population. However, her activities did not remain limited to the domestic world, because she was also known for organising annual ethnic markets in the southern provinces of the Netherlands. The next year she would organise a big market in the conference hall of the The Hague Zoo. This heralded the launch of the Pasar Malam, an Indische institution, now around for half a century and self-touted as ‘the greatest Eurasian festival in the world’. In The Hague, Brückel-Beiten found an ally in Robinson, then chief editor of an Indische magazine. When Robinson's letter of 9 January 1958 arrived in Brückel-Beiten's hand, the two community leaders of the repatriated Dutch people had had no previous contact. Yet, Brückel- Beiten must have known about Robinson, because the reporter, columnist and author of novels about life in the former colony had become a wellknown figure in the post-colonial community in the 1950s. He approached her to ask if she would write a column for his magazine, which resulted in a mutual exchange of thoughts and ideas. In his letter, Robinson openly testified to his delicate position in Dutch society, on the one hand being a writer from the East and, on the other, living in the West and publishing within the homeland's literature (Willems 2009: 125-127).

As a Dutchman of Indian origin, he realised how little affinity he had with the mentality of his homeland by the North Sea. The Dutch habit of placing literature on a pedestal seemed ridiculous to him especially because, in his opinion, most writers had little to say. They were lacking life experience, which he felt was the only raw material on which to found a writer's imagination. These writers only knew the polder landscape of their own country, without being able, or willing, to picture life on the other side of the globe. In his view, Dutch writers – and artists in general – lacked a cosmopolitan outlook, whereas people from the Dutch East Indies had already regularly come into contact with Asian classics, as well as with American culture: books, films, fashion and music.