‘At the first meeting she found him a jellyfish’

‘The photo was taken in 1942 on Java, in Malang, where my father’s divorced mother lived. The first Japanese troops had already landed on Borneo, my father was mobilized as a reserve officer. Both born in India, such as most of my grandparents and great -grandparents, my parents met at a party during the study in Leiden; Indian law for my father, French for my mother. At the first introduction my mother found my father ‘a jellyfish’. It was a coincidence that they lived a hundred meters apart, in the Breestraat and the beautiful Japiksteeg, and both had a dog that had to be spent regularly. A reunion on the street was therefore inevitable. Without the alcoholic bravoure of the party, the jellyfish gave birth a lot better.

My father, after his allowance, had stopped his allowance for too long, well earned with selling insurance, and bought a car. In that he took my mother to France. In Brittany he wanted to buy a ring in Breton style, where she could choose from two inscriptions: Toujours Fidèle or Toujours Brittany. She chose the latter, but when my father finally graduated and went back to India, she went with him without finishing her studies. They married in 1940. The necessary papers before the marriage had come with the last ship that had left for the German occupation from the Netherlands to India.

After three difficult years in Japanese camps, they returned to the Netherlands, where they initially mainly had financial problems. My father had a good job at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but he did not yield much in the beginning. When my brother was born in 1949, the wives of his colleagues would come to a maternity visit, in the bedroom. My parents could not have affected money for upper players. Giggling, my mother told me later that she had cut an intact bar from an old torn cloth and had folded the blankets at the top to stop the appearance. Our children never lacked anything. We were well cared for. But the most remarkable achievement of my parents is perhaps that they never passed on us of the war traumas they undoubtedly had. « 

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