The Jakarta Post PrintJune 23, 2007
Jakarta: A city we learn to love but never to like
Opinion News - Friday, June 22, 2007
Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Lipstick, stilettos, cheap makeup and condoms. These women that walk the
night are distinctly familiar yet impossible to remember, and no matter
the variety of euphemistic names they go by, at a base level they all mean
"whore".
If Jakarta were a person, she'd be a whore. Fornicating with power and
money, feigning ecstasy. All the world's pleasures accessible at a price.
The city residents love to hate is one of contradictions. A place where
beer flows more freely from taps than running water and malls stand as
plateaus of gluttony amid the conscripts of poverty.
Falsehood has a perennial spring in a city where life is blunt and
brutish. A place where even humanity has a price.
Shelters for the homeless are too few to mention. But love motels sit
strategically in all five municipalities -- inconspicuous in their
presence, conspicuous in their activities.
Jakarta's callous monotony can also be a living prison. Scores are trapped
in congestion while slums incarcerate a million sadnesses.
Most everyone is caught in the interminable daily chase for wealth,
property and the pursuit of leisure time.
Those who can enclose themselves in housing enclaves to keep the din of
the metropolis at bay. Hence Jakarta's two faces: the modern city and the
kampung.
Unlike Lady Liberty half a world away, the mistress of Jakarta makes no
pledge to shelter "your tired, your poor... your huddled masses yearning
to breath free".
Yet come they will.
Though used and abused, she is still pursued. She holds the promise of
pleasure. The power to make impossible dreams come true. A promise luring
thousands to her bosom every year.
The city's glitz shines bright from yonder. But the magnate resonates from
predominance as the nation's financial and business hub. Though it
represents just 0.03 percent of the country's territory, its activities
account for 17 percent of national GDP.
Friends abroad email of a beautiful summer's day in Cambridge. Another
recounts a walk in New York's Central Park. A Delhi resident boasts the
expedience of its Metro.
We in Jakarta can gloat over little other than the availability of kretek
and Teh Botol at every corner tuck shop.
Still we are here, calling her home. Our mother, drunk or sober.
What cannot be conveyed in any postcard or email is the city's slowly
beguiling character, which sways even the sternest disposition.
Jakarta is not captivating all at once. Her subtle charm, like the smog,
abounds, enveloping everything.
It is not a place to like. One has to "learn" to love the city over time
with all its idiosyncrasies or hate it completely.
Not surprisingly, Jakarta's nickname is the Big Durian. The foul-smelling
fruit that those who love it can never forget, but those who do not will
always regret.
For the housewife it is the luxury of everything imaginable at the
doorstep, from morning groceries to roving tailors on converted
three-wheeled sowing machines.
Professionals have range of choice in work and hobbies thrive.
Children are perhaps the orphans of the city. With few parks and
playgrounds, those who can afford it place their kids at artificial play
areas in icy-cold shopping malls.
Jakarta is a place where the good, the bad and the unthinkable have equal
favor. A society constantly living on a guilt edge forcing the best and
(worst) of creativity to rise.
Leave her for a few days and an unconscious longing creeps in as we covet
the luxuries found nowhere else: The fried gorengan chock full of
cholesterol; the street vendors who sell everything from magazines to
souvenirs; the umbrella kids on a rainy day; the Pak Ogah U-turn boys who
are a Godsend when we need them and a frustrating hindrance when we don't;
The huge range of high-end to dead-end goods to suit every pocket's need.
Deputy Governor Fauzi Bowo perhaps said it best: "This city is a giant
living laboratory".
But this is nothing new. Half a millennium ago, when the genesis of
Batavia was emerging, the harbor borough had always been a repository for
different cultures.
However Jakarta is no melting pot. Instead it celebrates idiosyncrasy
providing a place not only in which to survive, but thrive.
The young mohawked punks, the elderly in their kebaya, the satin-tied
executive and waria trannies all have their place. A microcosm of
Indonesia's beautiful diversity.
No single ethnic or religious group has ever dominated, not even the
so-called indigenous Betawi.
This is why we love Jakarta. The freedom to be all that one can be or even
don't want to be.
It is custom in Betawi culture to present a cake in the shape of two
crocodiles during weddings. Legend has it that crocodiles only take one
mate for a lifetime. Like Jakarta, once you learn to love her it will be a
life of unending lust.