A Polaroid, a Riot, and some Perspective
I often call myself a global vagabond. Growing up, we usually moved every two to three years. I grew up in Singapore, America (US and Canada), Europe (London and Bonn, Germany). The longest time I have spent in one country was in my own: Indonesia. I called Indonesia home during its tumultuous transition to democracy and the years prior, and I am glad to be able to appreciate the difference between before, during, and after. I have moved away again from my home since and, though I miss some of its creature comforts, I am glad to have this distance, which in my view is necessary to gain perspective.
Below is an essay I wrote some years back, again when I was still living outside of the country (but visiting for the summer). With some adjustments, I can write the same essay today. My fortunate friends in Jakarta can be proud of the progress they have helped usher in. But I am pretty sure that, barring personal tragedy, Pak Polaroid in Tangkuban Perahu is still climbing up his hill.
A Polaroid, a Riot, and some Perspective
July 28, 2011
A few days ago, at the edge of the Tangkuban Perahu crater outside of Bandung, a man holding a camera offered to take our picture. How much, I asked. Twenty thousand rupiah, he answered, or a little over 2 dollars. OK, I said. People have to make a living, and his is an honest one. I thought he was going to pull out a Polaroid. But no, he took our picture with a little digital camera, then sat down at a nearby table to pull out a portable printer. In minutes, he produced our family photo.
His Polaroid sits at home now, he explains. The Polaroid only cost him 300,000 rupiah -- or about $125, back in the early 1990s when the rupiah was worth 2,500 rupiah to the US dollar. But the paper the camera needs to print on: that's very expensive now, and getting harder and harder to come by. This camera he has now, he leases. It would cost him 5 million rupiah to buy, or $550, and he doesn't have that money. Instead he pays the co-op he works for some 2,500 rupiah for every photo he prints. Plus he pays a monthly fee for renting the camera.
How long have you been taking pictures here, I asked. I expected him to answer, since 1990. Which would mean that he has been asking tourists to take their pictures for some 20 years -- quite a feat, in my eyes.
Instead, he answered: since 1973. "I am almost 60 years old," he said, eyes twinkling.
I nearly fell off the uneven teak log that was my chair. He dusted off his red-and-silver plastic printer and tucked it back into his fraying backpack.
Thirty-eight years. The man has been wandering the slippery slopes of this crusty old volcano for thirty eight long years.
Down in the city, skyscrapers rise, banks open and close, protesters clash with police, and teenagers tweet and tweet. Yet this man chooses to trudge up the mountain every day from his home down in the valley, in Lembang.
Here, under the beautiful azure sky that almost daily welcomes rolling clouds at mid-day, high up these emerald hills, this man chose to find humility, maturity, perspective.
He talks about his collection of cameras. I tell him that his Polaroid will one day be a collector's item. He looked at me with raised eyebrows, as if to say, what does that mean -- what good is a collector's item to me -- I'm interested in how much I take home every day.
Thirty eight years. That's some perspective.
Fifteen years ago, I sat outside a burning building on Salemba Raya. It was July 27, 1996.
Earlier in the day, I was having lunch with three friends, discussing whether to visit the new Prada boutique at new-ish luxury mall Plaza Senayan, when I got a phone call that the headquarters of the Indonesian Democratic Party, or PDI, was being raided by police. The HQ had been camped out by pro-democracy protesters for weeks, and a crackdown in some form was expected. Now it had come. My friends tried to dissuade me from going. But there was no way that I would not go.
The day passed. Buildings and buses burned. Riot police hovered. People were hurt, although much of the violence took place early in the day, without many witnesses. The upheaval lasted but a day. Not long after, life was business as usual in Jakarta.
But that day was the beginning of the end for the Soeharto regime. The path that Indonesia took to find a new way of governing, that took some twists and turns, and some turns were quite bumpy. But we got there.
We are here now, on the other side.
I have been living out of Indonesia now for some six, seven years. On and off. I am back often, although never often enough. And I often wonder about perspective. Mine. Yours. Ours.
I watch the news on TV. Scandal, corruption, scandal. Under Soeharto, such talk would not be so plainly spoken. I read articles, or rather, I gleam. I read enough to realise that we seem to be running in circles. Lurching forward, making progress, then dipping down again, losing focus, losing traction, losing the ground we made.
Did we not learn from all those years watching dollars and rupiahs shift from our pockets, from the pockets of the hard-working and the trusting, into a seemingly bottomless pit of greed?
Have all those years not given us perspective?
Are we squandering our opportunities to learn from our failures?
Or do we keep trudging up that mountain, scaling the emerald hills, getting lost under the beautiful azure sky, wandering around, taking pictures with one camera after another, learning along the way, but still at the same spot. We become wiser, older. The surroundings change, improve. But the circumstances and predicament do not.
Fifteen years ago, I watched buildings and buses burn. I watched from a sidewalk, with other bystanders. We chatted amongst each other, and gasped when large shards fell to the ground. It was as if a film was unfolding before us, and we were frozen by curiosity. Or inertia.
I sometimes feel like we are still watching those buildings and buses burn.
