When I was eight, my grandfather gave me a gift that changed the way I saw the world. It wasn’t wrapped in shiny paper or tucked inside a box. Instead, it came bundled in a piece of old batik cloth, the colours faded like the pages of a forgotten book. It was a keris—a small, wavy-bladed dagger that, according to my grandfather, had belonged to our family for generations.
I remember the day as if it were carved into my bones. We were sitting on the back veranda of his wooden house in Cirebon, a gentle afternoon sun casting golden light across the tiled floor. Birds chattered in the mango trees, and the scent of jasmine floated out from my grandmother’s garden.
“Come,” he said, patting the bench beside him. “I have something for you.”
He handed me the keris as though he were passing over the beating heart of our lineage. The hilt was dark, nearly black, carved into the shape of a naga’s head, with its eyes worn smooth from generations of palms holding it tightly. The blade was sheathed, but the metal peeked through like a secret not quite kept.
“This belonged to your great-great-grandfather,” he told me in his low, gravelly voice. “He was a close companion of Sunan Gunung Jati.”
I stared at him, my breath caught somewhere between disbelief and wonder. Everyone in Cirebon had heard stories about the Wali, one of the revered saints who brought Islam to Java. To say your family had once walked alongside him was to tether your story to something sacred.
My grandfather leaned closer. “This keris is no ordinary weapon. It was forged by an empu, a master smith who prayed and fasted before laying hammer to iron. It’s said the blade holds a spirit. Not one that haunts, but one that protects.”
At eight years old, I was fascinated by anything magical. I didn’t question his words. I simply believed. He taught me how to hold it properly, never to point it at someone unless I meant to defend, never to draw it in anger, and always—always—to treat it with reverence. He kept it on the top shelf of his wooden cabinet, beside a collection of yellowing letters and an old Dutch photograph of his father. After that day, I visited it often. I’d tiptoe in, unfold the batik wrap gently, and whisper greetings, just in case the spirit inside was listening.
As I grew older, the keris began to mean something more. When my grandfather fell ill, he told me stories I’d never heard before, tales of how our family once served the palace, how the keris had warned its bearer through dreams of betrayal before a war, how it once turned hot in someone’s hands when danger approached. One story lingered with me most: during the turbulent years of the Java War, one of our ancestors, a court messenger, was tasked with delivering a letter to a noble in the neighbouring kingdom. The night before the journey, he dreamed of a snake coiled beneath a banyan tree, its eyes burning red, its tongue flickering like fire. He awoke drenched in sweat and took it as an omen, bringing the keris close to his chest, seeking clarity. As he crossed into enemy land, the blade beneath his tunic began to warm, searing his skin until he was forced to turn back. Days later, word came that the noble had been assassinated and all envoys ambushed. That single decision, guided by the blade, had saved his life, and preserved a branch of our family that would eventually lead to me.
He laughed once, eyes twinkling despite the oxygen tube across his face. “The blade’s twisted shape is like the journey of life. Never straight. But always pointed forward.”
He passed away during the rainy season, when the sky wept for weeks and the garden turned into a sea of mud. During the funeral, as chants filled the air and neighbours gathered under blue tarps, I kept the keris in my lap, wrapped tightly. I didn’t cry. I just held it. Firm. Silent. I realised then, I wasn’t meant to be a warrior. I didn’t know how to fight battles with blades. But I could remember. I could listen. I could observe. My role in this lineage, I began to suspect, was not to command the keris, but to bear witness to what it carried. To notice the tremors in its history, to hear the echoes of the past, and make sense of them in my own language.
After his passing, I took it with me when I left for university in Jakarta. Most of my friends brought posters, books, or beanbags to decorate their rooms. I brought a century-old keris. Some laughed. Some were curious. But I never let anyone touch it.
In the city, far from home, it became my anchor. I’d sit at my desk on stormy nights, unwrapping it slowly like a ritual. Sometimes I swore I could feel warmth radiating from the hilt, or catch the scent of teak and jasmine, like I was back in my grandfather’s veranda again.
There were moments, many of them, when I was lost in the rush of deadlines, heartbreaks, and identity crises, when everything felt like a blur of fluorescent lights and unanswered messages, and the version of myself I was becoming no longer resembled the child who once believed in magic. Life, as my grandfather once said, was like the twisted blade of the keris: never straight, rarely easy, always moving forward through curves we can’t predict.
I’d reach for the keris, not for answers, but for anchoring. Just the feel of its carved hilt in my hand brought a stillness, a sense that I wasn’t truly alone. The scent of aged teak and lingering jasmine would rise like a memory summoned, and suddenly I’d be back on the veranda beside him, hearing his voice, soft and steady, guiding me through the fog.
I could feel my grandfather’s presence in the weight of the blade, the breath of generations echoing in its curve. And in that quiet, I found the strength to keep going, not in defiance of the chaos, but in rhythm with it.
One night, during my final year, I had a dream that felt more like a visitation. I stood in a vast field of fog. The sky hovered in a timeless glow—neither dawn nor dusk, as if the world had paused. From the mist emerged a figure—tall, cloaked, radiant. He didn’t speak. He simply nodded at me and gestured toward the keris in my hand. The blade glowed faintly, casting spirals of light across the fog.
I woke up with tears on my cheeks.
My mother said it was a blessing, a sign that my ancestors were watching. My grandmother, now well into her nineties, held my hand and said softly, “You are the guardian now. Not of a weapon, but of our story.”
It took me a while to understand what she meant. At first, I thought she was speaking in metaphor, as elders often do—offering wisdom wrapped in riddles. But over time, I realised the weight of what she’d passed on wasn’t meant to rest in a sheath or a shrine. It was meant to live through me.
As someone who creates—who draws, who writes, who shapes meaning through image and word—I began to see the keris not only as a link to my past, but as a responsibility for the future. The stories my grandfather told, the myths he wove between cups of tea and late-night silence—they weren’t just bedtime tales. They were blueprints. Not just of who we were, but of who I am meant to become.
To be a guardian of a story is to keep it alive—not by locking it away, but by retelling it, reshaping it, letting it thread itself into new forms. Into the patterns I draw, the symbols I etch, the narratives I share. The keris had once warned, protected, and guided. Now, I realise, it also inspires.
Years later, I returned to Cirebon to visit my grandmother. The house hadn’t changed much. The mango trees still bloomed. The veranda was quieter. I brought the keris back to where it came from. Not to return it—but to reconnect it.
That evening, I sat on the same bench where my grandfather once gave it to me. I placed the keris on the table, lit a candle, and whispered stories of what I’d been through—successes, failures, loves, losses. I spoke not to the air, but to him, to the unseen, to the spirit of the keris that remembered.
And in that moment, something shifted. The candle flickered, the air thickened slightly, and the silence wasn’t empty—it was full. They say a keris is alive if it chooses its owner. I used to wonder if that was true. But now, I no longer question it. I don’t need it to hum or glow or whisper. I just need to hold it—to remember that I come from a line of storytellers, guardians, believers. That somewhere in the folds of time, one of us stood beside Sunan Gunung Jati, not as a warrior, but as a witness. And that through me, the story still walks forward.
Today, the keris sits in a glass case in my studio—not hidden, but illuminated beneath soft light, among sketchbooks, storyboards, and artefacts from my creative process. I work as a visual storyteller: part illustrator, part writer, sometimes designer. I studied Communication Design at university, drawn to the way images could speak louder than words, and how symbols could stretch across cultures and time.
Clients often ask what inspires my aesthetic. Some point to the mythological undertones in my work—the curve of a serpent, the outline of a blade, the motif of ancestral threads. Few realise it all traces back to this one object. Visitors sometimes mistake the keris for decor, a relic picked up at a flea market or gallery. Some even reach for it. I stop them gently.
“It’s not just steel,” I say, as I’ve said for years. “It remembers.”
I don’t need the keris to hum or glow. Its presence is enough. In holding it, I feel rooted—part of a lineage shaped not by power, but by presence. What it offers me isn’t protection, but purpose. And that through me—through my hands, my lines, my language—the story still walks forward.
