Street smart: Jakarta needs love
If everyone's entitled to have little melancholic moments every once in a while, I need to use my melancholy pass right now
I met a young man tonight, and I haven't been able to get his face out of my head for days. It was Tuesday night, my friends and I were eating out. As we were laughing off the extra calories, chatting away, with our iPhones and Blackberries scattered around the table, someone tapped on my shoulder.
I turned to look and saw a man in his late twenties, looking really shaken. I looked closer and saw the man was literally crying. Tears running down his swollen face.
He opened his bag and asked me if there was anything in there I could buy from him because he needed money to get out of the city. He was running away from an employer who beat him up.
There was an old radio, crumpled clothes and a battered cell phone in the bag. Nothing I could use. So instead I gave him Rp 10,000 and asked him to keep his stuff. "Please, I'll sell you my handphone for Rp 30,000." he said. "I just need to get out of here."
Thirty thousand was not going to put me out of business but it was a lot to give to a stranger. I looked to see if anyone on my table cared to chip in, but all 6 of them pretended the man was not there. *Maybe I could offer him food,' I thought. But instead I said "no thanks" and watched him hesitantly walk away. I keep saying to myself that it could have been a con. But what if it wasn't?
You don't need to tell me. It's an old overplayed song and you know every chorus as if you wrote it yourself. The irony of Jakarta, the poverty, the unemployment, the social gap, bla bla bla. You've heard it, seen it, lived it for so long that you've gotten too numb to feel it.
Having lived in this city all your life, breathing the air that foreign environmental researchers deem to be hazardous, yet you have no choice but to inhale the fumes 13 times a minute.
Every morning, on your way to drop off your kids at school, which costs you a fortune, with the risk of a stroke by the age of 35, you go through a scenic drive of the vibrant city: people falling out of crammed buses, an assortment of beggars in every intersection; blind ones, amputees, infants, you name it.
You buy a newspaper off a little boy and read about a celebrity robbed and killed by their own housekeepers You think of how you wanted to teach your kids love and kindness, but you love them too much to put them in harms way. So instead, they learn from you that giving is foolish, because there will always be bad people out there trying a scam on you.
I don't blame you for trying to protect your loved ones, this city contains too many con artists. Everyone from the pickpockets, to the multimillion-dollar mobile phone providers is trying to rip you off.
At first you were just being cautious, but after a while it seems that everybody out there is a bad person trying to exploit your sympathy. So you tell your kids, when anyone asks for change, walk away. You tell them about the dodgy hobo-pimps who organize all the beggars in Jakarta.
You warn them about robbers who can put you in a state of hypnosis and make you do anything they say. "So, never talk to strangers, especially when they ask for your help" you tell your kids. Years after year of living like this will make you a hard, cold bitch. It will scrape away whatever little compassion you have left in you layer by layer.
But I believe, in these jaded hearts of ours, a little thing named compassion is still alive. It's there slumbering sleepily in our somnolent urban souls. It's the reason why you don't want to look the old beggar in the eye as you raise a hand to shoo her off.
It's that little voice that asks "Should I stop and help?" when you see a motor accident on your way home, and a bloody woman is on the sidewalk while people just stood watching, and some go through her purse for valuables.
I have gotten to a point where I couldn't stand to stay another day in hard cold Jakarta. But why am I still here? Simple answer. No place else to go. Move out of the country?
Even though Australian developers claim that Indonesians are a significant market for their property business, believe it or not, most of us can't even afford a plane ticket to get us there. Move to another city?
While my travels have taken me to many enchanting places in the country, living there permanently is another thing. I'm sure the competition for musicians is less fierce in, let's say, the Mentawai Islands. But the only gigs I'll land is to sing covers of *the Eagles' in seafood restaurants.
So I guess I'll stay in town. But I have made a pact, with all you readers as my witness, to make my existence in Jakarta worth something for this city. I have made it my mission to be compassionate in Jakarta. Do my part to help as much as I can. Because if anything is scarce in this city, it's certainly compassion.
As cheesy as it sounds, I think if you stop to think about it, you'll see how important it is. I hope you can do the same.
- By: KARTIKA JAHJA from http://www.thejakartapost.coml
If everyone's entitled to have little melancholic moments every once in a while, I need to use my melancholy pass right now
I met a young man tonight, and I haven't been able to get his face out of my head for days. It was Tuesday night, my friends and I were eating out. As we were laughing off the extra calories, chatting away, with our iPhones and Blackberries scattered around the table, someone tapped on my shoulder.
I turned to look and saw a man in his late twenties, looking really shaken. I looked closer and saw the man was literally crying. Tears running down his swollen face.
He opened his bag and asked me if there was anything in there I could buy from him because he needed money to get out of the city. He was running away from an employer who beat him up.
There was an old radio, crumpled clothes and a battered cell phone in the bag. Nothing I could use. So instead I gave him Rp 10,000 and asked him to keep his stuff. "Please, I'll sell you my handphone for Rp 30,000." he said. "I just need to get out of here."
Thirty thousand was not going to put me out of business but it was a lot to give to a stranger. I looked to see if anyone on my table cared to chip in, but all 6 of them pretended the man was not there. *Maybe I could offer him food,' I thought. But instead I said "no thanks" and watched him hesitantly walk away. I keep saying to myself that it could have been a con. But what if it wasn't?
You don't need to tell me. It's an old overplayed song and you know every chorus as if you wrote it yourself. The irony of Jakarta, the poverty, the unemployment, the social gap, bla bla bla. You've heard it, seen it, lived it for so long that you've gotten too numb to feel it.
Having lived in this city all your life, breathing the air that foreign environmental researchers deem to be hazardous, yet you have no choice but to inhale the fumes 13 times a minute.
Every morning, on your way to drop off your kids at school, which costs you a fortune, with the risk of a stroke by the age of 35, you go through a scenic drive of the vibrant city: people falling out of crammed buses, an assortment of beggars in every intersection; blind ones, amputees, infants, you name it.
You buy a newspaper off a little boy and read about a celebrity robbed and killed by their own housekeepers You think of how you wanted to teach your kids love and kindness, but you love them too much to put them in harms way. So instead, they learn from you that giving is foolish, because there will always be bad people out there trying a scam on you.
I don't blame you for trying to protect your loved ones, this city contains too many con artists. Everyone from the pickpockets, to the multimillion-dollar mobile phone providers is trying to rip you off.
At first you were just being cautious, but after a while it seems that everybody out there is a bad person trying to exploit your sympathy. So you tell your kids, when anyone asks for change, walk away. You tell them about the dodgy hobo-pimps who organize all the beggars in Jakarta.
You warn them about robbers who can put you in a state of hypnosis and make you do anything they say. "So, never talk to strangers, especially when they ask for your help" you tell your kids. Years after year of living like this will make you a hard, cold bitch. It will scrape away whatever little compassion you have left in you layer by layer.
But I believe, in these jaded hearts of ours, a little thing named compassion is still alive. It's there slumbering sleepily in our somnolent urban souls. It's the reason why you don't want to look the old beggar in the eye as you raise a hand to shoo her off.
It's that little voice that asks "Should I stop and help?" when you see a motor accident on your way home, and a bloody woman is on the sidewalk while people just stood watching, and some go through her purse for valuables.
I have gotten to a point where I couldn't stand to stay another day in hard cold Jakarta. But why am I still here? Simple answer. No place else to go. Move out of the country?
Even though Australian developers claim that Indonesians are a significant market for their property business, believe it or not, most of us can't even afford a plane ticket to get us there. Move to another city?
While my travels have taken me to many enchanting places in the country, living there permanently is another thing. I'm sure the competition for musicians is less fierce in, let's say, the Mentawai Islands. But the only gigs I'll land is to sing covers of *the Eagles' in seafood restaurants.
So I guess I'll stay in town. But I have made a pact, with all you readers as my witness, to make my existence in Jakarta worth something for this city. I have made it my mission to be compassionate in Jakarta. Do my part to help as much as I can. Because if anything is scarce in this city, it's certainly compassion.
As cheesy as it sounds, I think if you stop to think about it, you'll see how important it is. I hope you can do the same.
- By: KARTIKA JAHJA from http://www.thejakartapost.coml
