Take-Aways

In Jakarta now and what comes to mind more than anything is Tin-Tin. Tin-Tin and Jakarta are somehow intimately connected. I don’t even like Tin-Tin, come to think of it I don’t much like Jakarta either. What was the nickname again? The “Big Durian” to New York’s “Big Apple”. Apt, very apt. But Jakarta has its jewel and it’s the Café Batavia, in Fatahilla square, Kota. It’s the Great Gatsby in the tropics, Casablanca, Lauren Bacall, Hemingway and Palph Fiennes in the “English Patient”. White suits, Panama hats, long cigarette holders and Graham Greene. This, flanked by the shanty town of the old Dutch harbour and the catwalk on the train that officiates as both intercity railway and inner city overground. The catwalk, that rivals the Milan fashion shows in timed precision and quick succession of models. But it’s not what they wear that matters here, it’s what they sell. It comes in baskets, plastic bags or hanging from sticks and it is anything from bottled drinks, crisps, sweets, banana leaf wrapped goodies to firecrackers, magazines, pins and rackets with electric netting that fry the mosquitoes and flies. The show is rounded off by the occasional beggar or beggar child. The train is decrepit. Doors sliding open while the train moves, graffiti, broken windows. Such a contrast with the countryside, where the rice terraces are sparkling green and orderly. Where the banana trees are in rows and the people are under wraps because of Ramadan. Ramadan is obviously sacred in Java. During the day everything is quiet except during prayer time when the muezzins blare out that God is merciful in the mosque’s loudspeakers. It’s a nice sound. Particularly at sundown except when every now and then the loudspeakers are really much too loud or the performer is really and truly ghastly. We are moving from the West to the East, taking in the rice terraces and waterfalls at Salak mountain, the hot springs and volcano at Garut, the beach and the silvery iguanas at Pangandaran until we reach Yogyakarta. For some strange reason it is actually pronounced Djogjakarta and it s a University town with its own Sultan, the Buddhist temple of Borobudur, the Hindu temple of Prambanan and the Batik painting mafia. They are all around the old town and along the legitimate artists they sell fake stuff to tourists at exorbitant prices. Yogya is unmistakably cool and relaxed. In the Sultan’s compound, they are getting ready for Idul Fitri or the end of Ramadan. The day will culminate in a parade and the appearance of a tower of food that after being blessed at the mosque will be torn to pieces by all those in the square who will fight for the piece of good luck a fragment of this tower represents. Ramadan in Java is overwhelming. It takes over the island and its people so that during the day everything is quiet, almost soulless coming alive at prayer times only. Islam to the outside eye seems binding, strict, oppressively disciplined. Here not all the women are covered but some little girls are. In pinks and blues, yellows and frilly whites. But despite the colours of the rainbow, nine years old is young to mark the difference between what a man and a woman can and cannot do in the world. Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, softened by the traces of so many cultures and religions that preceded this one. I did not know what to expect. At any rate, the reality defies expectation. I do not think I could ever say “I have been to Indonesia’ unless I went to every nook and cranny, it is so huge and so complex. And if you do not believe me, open an atlas and look at the geography and the profusion of names of myriad origins that sweep this, the world’s largest archipelago.