SITOR Situmorang in his youth was not a painter of words. Poetry was not in his head yet. His first poem, Pasar Senen (Senen Market) was only published in Siasat magazine in August 1948. Prior to this, especially in 1942, Sitor was a pupil and a vegetable seller.

A vegetable seller? When the Dutch colonial government was in shambles as a result of the Japanese invasion in 1942, the future of thousands of non-Javanese schoolchildren who studied in