Reverse Culture Shock

Sitting on the decently clean steps of a mammoth mall spewing of elite Indonesians in the early evening, it was my four month anniversary of high-end urban slum living in Jakarta. I cautiously say slum because Kebon Kacang wasn’t your typical shantytown with houses falling at its seams and doe eyed children mucking about, but it wasn’t a place anyone would readily choose to live in, with the stench of sewage from the Ciliwung river throbbing in the Asian humidex and rats the size of which put the ones in New York to shame.

There was nothing to rave back home about this city, on weekdays I was stuck in that square mile because of traffic, it was bloody humid every single day, there was a lack of greenery and sidewalks, and the cost of good quality clothes was comparable to western prices. But the passing of time created a routine, and then a relationship and then I felt a sordid attachment to inanimate objects in the street.

I was surely, indefinitely, falling in love with the city. And I mean the real shit, the kind that puts you on an emotional roller coaster, where one minute you’re thinking what the hell am I doing here, and the next, you’re hobbling down the street like a happy drunk, not that I actually know what its like to be drunk.

There was a rhythm to that incoherent intersection, and at first, it was a depiction of all that didn’t make sense in this city, an unordered jumble of roads and alleyways meeting in this pseudo centre surrounded by motorbike taxis and noodle carts and a guy selling so-called shrimp dim sum. And trust me, after all this time, it still doesn’t make sense, but watching it all was strangely soothing. Feeling calm and comforted while street disorder unfolded was perhaps a mark of my conversion in becoming a pseudo local.

Idling on those steps with nothing better to do than gaze lazily at street life, unconsciously my mind switched filters, giving everything a rosy haze, and I started thinking maybe, I shouldn’t leave at all.