Beauty among civilization

Sellisel läägel teemal palusid Jakarta haridusametnikud  meil kirjutada lõpuessee oma Indoneesia-kogemusest. Andke andeks, aga ei tulnud pühapäevakõne, no ei tulnud:

The beauty of contradictions

Early on into my stay in Indonesia, I met a Javanese man whose fascinating character I find impossible to forget. He had worked as a flight technician for years, including some for the German company of Lufthansa and then for another ten in California, USA. Sipping teh manis at the house of our mutual firend, we had a long conversation well into the tropical night. His English was impeccable. Yet this man of international background and experience had left all this modern world behind just to become a traditional rice farmer. Still wearing a worn-out jacket with the emblem of Lufthansa on his chest and taking a long puff of his superstrong clove cigarettes, he claimed to be very happy now. Much happier than he had been before at the days of his travels. He confessed having reached a point abroad when he did not know anymore who he was or what was truly important in life. Now, walking barefoot in a wet ricepaddy, he feels at home, at the right place.

I took the advantage of talking to someone with sufficient level of English (my own language skills of Indonesian at the time amounted to a few words like terima kasih, bule, berapa, permisi, di mana and so on) and asked him about Indonesian politics and society. Evidently, this educated and experienced rice farmer claimed to be a passionate communist. But not the kind of communist I would expect, having been born in the Soviet Union. Nor the kind of communist you can still find shouting slogans in Western Europe. But in a way, a very Javanese communist. Being understandably critical about the Western world, his political world view had less to do with Marx and Engels and more with the communal, as well as mystical, thinking of a traditional village society. He was apparently nostalgic about the Sukarno era, a sentiment not entirely uncommon in this country, claiming that things had gone wrong after that. And that they could only get better, if a descendant of Sukarno would get into power again. Because only the people of his glorious lineage had the power to steer this country into prosperity. I was left perplexed. And fascinated.

This fascination has not left me ever since. And my being perplexed has not vanished either. It has just grown, acquiring each month more and more layers. To me, Indonesia is a zigzaw puzzle, ’big picture’ of which is impossible to grasp. It is a spicy campur with all kinds of different and contradictory flavours piled up in one plate and covered with the national kecap manis of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika. It is a never-ending struggle to maintain unity in diversity from Aceh to Papua (both of which are rich in resuourses as well as resistance). From orangutans in Sumatra to dragons in Comodo, from inundated Jakartan slums to incredible luxury of Raja Ampat. It is a simultaneous unfolding of different religious and historical layers of cultures that spread all over the country that Multatuli once called Insulind.

Even in the seemingly central and well defined island of Java I find myself constantly stumbling on incompatible cultural traces that originate from different centuries, yet are visible and present simultaneously. The Javanese traditional calendar is a curious way of telling the time between the Gregorian and local calendars. The most important and mystically favorable days are determined at the crossing of these two measurings of time. The ceremonial shadow puppet play, originating at least from the times of Hinduistic cults, goes on to be the cornerstone of Muslim Javanese culture, now also listed as the only Indonesian practice in the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. In order to appease the muslim law that prohibits the depiction of a human form, the puppets were once stylised and distorted to look less like humans. The apparently pagan tradition of ritualistic sexual intercourse on Gunung Kemukus, in the very heart of Java, is said to be perfectly Muslim by the local villagers. There are women wearing jilbabs that go there every jumat pon to better their economic circumstances by having sex with strangers. At times it seems that the whole essence of Indonesian culture is a precarious effort to maintain balance between diverging opposites. Culture as rope-walking on contradictions, the culture of compromise.

But it is not only the fluctuations between traditional agama and the religion of Islam that create these contradictions. It can also be manifest in the tensions between what is considered to be Eastern and Western, good and bad. Critisising the Western capitalist economy goes hand in hand with crowds flooding shopping malls. The bules in scant clothes are frowned upon, yet almost everyone seems to want to take a picture with them. I have seen middle aged ibus respectably dressed in head-scarves among the audience at a drag show in Mirota Batik on Malioboro street.

Taking pride in one’s traditions is noble. Yet at what point does respecting one’s elders and superiors start to contribute to the all-encompassing corruption that everyone seems to bemoan? Military power of well-connected generals goes often unquestioned and right there next to it on the power plate you can see the spiritual and mystical power of the sultans of Jawa Tengah. The very Javanese ethos of self-constraint has developed in a natural environment where everything thrives with a lush and joyous ferocity. The social pressure on youngsters to marry and have children as soon as possible exists in parallel with the respect for the legendary princess Kartini who wrote passionate letters about the need for the emancipation of Javanese women. The noisy fleet of motorbikes does not eradicate the sincere belief in ghosts and other otherworldly creatures. Deforestation, pollution, gas subsidies exist side by side with breathtaking natural beauty.

The list is endless. In the sense that it is possible to go on infinitely with the examples and also that these are the contradictions that probably will never be solved, smoothed, eradicated. And maybe, at least some of them, do not have to. And for sure, with its incompatible extremes that Indonesia somehow manages to contain, it will keep on intriguing and fascinating foreigners.