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All tagged Jakarta
She never baked cookies for me nor mended my clothes. But it was her, along with my dad, who instilled in me our family values. They were and are: Be kind, be humble, be generous, and be the best that you can be. Serve your family, your community, and your country.
To me, their resumes are annotation of a more indelible legacy: they were kind and happy and sweet and funny. They made us smile. They made us laugh. They hugged and hugged and then hugged some more. What’s love got to do with it? A lot.
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?
It is often not easy, not at all. That tapestry on the wall, we have woven it together, not apart.
Is it better to have them suddenly snatched away by mortality, without that moment of clarity and reprieve where we can express to each other that life amounts to this: love, friendship, peace and kindness? That everything else is noise.
After a lynching in Cililitan, East Jakarta, a mob rampaged through a jail after police arrested some of their number. One police officer who did try to act was roughed up. "If we intervene, the mob turns on us too," he says.
