Celebrations

On Valentine’s Day Jakarta filled with hearts. Extracted from its infidel origins, a celebration of Love just fills a universal niche. In a Muslim country sending Valentines presents a paradox, but only truly troubles a few.

The day’s top story photo: women in black burkas, faces covered, buying Hallmark Valentine’s Day cards! Buried on page 5: women in black burkas protesting the same! Never mind that I’ve seen more black burkas in St. Paul than Indonesia. The paper itself breaks the tie with half a dozen Valentine-themed ads. The all-embracing religion of commerce.

And now it’s the Year of the Pig. Banned throughout the Soeharto regime, Chinese New Year has become a national holiday. From rafters & shop fronts, all the paper hearts transform to piglets. Conveniently, everything is already decorated in red. The poor purist is everywhere besieged. Note this Chinese-Indonesian pig has blue eyes, a bindi dot, & looks like a leprechaun. It must particularly gall the women protesting V-Day that pork is trayfe.
I mean: Haram. Forbidden.

Today we traveled to the Chinese neighborhood of Glodok, where the streets are strung with red lanterns. This was the area hit worst by the 1998 riots, which brought down the Soeharto regime. Like the Rodney King riots, the 3 days of violence & looting spread to target privileged ethnic minorities, in this case the Chinese. They’re only about 3% of the population, but command a disproportionate wealth. Over 6000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. A whole mall was burned. 1200 people died. Thanks to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, you can still see rubble & burned-out buildings from the riots 9 years ago.

Along Glodok’s narrow, winding roads we found the Dharma Jaya & Dharma Bakti temples. These are modest buildings, but date back to the 17th century, which in a tropical climate is an architectural miracle. The outside courtyards thronged with beggars in rags & soldiers in black. The crowd milled, fronting babies, the elderly & disfigured, until soldiers began to shout & wave batons. Then the crowd got noisy & started to move as a herd. Evan slipped into the smoky red temple. I backed against a gate to watch as the gathered Poor--who were there as such--reassembled in tight, toboggan lines & opened their umbrellas for the sun.

Inside the red lacquered temples it’s so smoky with incense & the six-foot crimson candles that sinks are set up in many corners to bathe the eyes. By the end, mine were streaming & blind. Everywhere there is fire and offerings. In some sense, these temples have been in a constant conflagration for 350 years.
[I’ve loaded a separate set of photos for New Years.]

Outside again a new ruckus rose & all the cameramen bunched like fish to food: A series of rich men had begun distributing rupiah bills to The Poor, one after another. It’s the custom of holiday to give money. Frowning men in army green kept strict order & the place in line with bamboo poles.