WIRANTO, now 62, cannot forget how he and six siblings, his parents and grandmother, lived together in the small house on a plot of 300 square meters. It is a Javanese traditional building with rooms only divided by partitions. There is a well east of the house where little Wiranto used to bathe with a bucket of water.

But there is more than mere nostalgia for the house in Punggawan, Banjarsari district, Surakarta. There his mother, Suwarsijah, ca