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i cannot hide my agony over this (i hope the last) suicide bombing wreaking havoc JW mariot and Ritz Carlton, Jakarta.
I am flabbergasted, it was only last week my country made headlines for successfully holding a peaceful election (it’s really something to be proud of cause we are the third largest democracy mind you and most Muslims on earth live in my country), but now indonesia is once more making headlines. yet it is not something to be proud of: suicide bombing!!!
immediate effect: the ghost of the bali 1 and 2 bombing and JW mariot bombing 2003 has comeback; the wound obtained from those bombings start to bleed again; fresh travel warning, weaken rupiah; chaos in the index market; MU cancel their visit.
Most Importantly, FEAR RULES THE DAY OF EVERY ORDINARY INDONESIAN.
Man, whoever you are, whatever faith your believe in, whatever ideology you uphold, whatever devil posses you sanity, KILLING THE INNOCENTS IS NEVER A FASHION.
IF YOU REALLY WANT TO DIE JUST FUCK OFF AND DIE BUT NEVER TAKE THE INNOCENTS WITH YOU.
well, actually i wanted to blog about our last presidential poll on wednesday but because i really did not know how to catch up with the hocus pocus of my ill-managed schedule, its only today i am able to sit my ass and blog.
so, after a week of mourning, waking up late and swollen eyes, i forced myself to raise early on wednesday. man, i was difficult. being a bachelor and living alone in my rented room, all assortments of rules (especially DA RULE on “thou shalt raise early”) i need to abide while at home with my parents seem to evaporate. however i managed to reached the bus station quite early (early my ass! it takes two hours from padang to bukittingi and another thirty minutes from bukitting to my kampung. i arrived at the bus stop at 8 and needed to waited for an hour before my bus departed. and the polling station at home was scheduled to close at 12. call it early delvi!!) and left for bukittinggi with i-dont-know-how-and-why renewed spirit.
padang, as the capital of west sumatra province, was unusually calm on wednesday. the traffic was surprisingly easy as well. well, it was okay for me because for the first time since coming home i was able to recognize the beauty boasted by this city by the sea.
however, despite the calmness that ruled that morning the sense of festivity was so intense. on my way to the main street, spirited election officers had already manned the polling station erected in the front yard of a private university across my building and were ready to welcome voters. then, i eavesdropped a nurse in her early thirties conversing with one of the election officials. she was wondering whether it was ok for her to vote early since she needed to go to work. i was wondering myself on how devoted this nurse could be. poll day was a national holiday yet she was still working.
nearing the city outskirt, i saw less car yet more and more people getting out of their houses and headed to the near by polling stations. some of them are in their best dress yet some were on their working apparel. i saw a farmer fresh from his paddy field carrying his plough tailing scores of hopeful voters to the polling station. the same thing went to a jamu (indonesian herbal drink) peddler. she appeared in the polling station to cast her democratic right fully armed.
but the most beautiful sight of that morning is an elderly couple walking hand in hand to the polling station. i cried a soft chuckled when i spotted them thru the glass window of my bus. ah, for a few seconds, my mind flew to a city where i left my heart. they walked slowly and carefully as if to signal that love could defy time yet time was too strong to be defied by their frail frame.
the old couple floated past me and panoramic shrub laced estuaries hurrying to the sea welcomed me. i did not know how i could find those estuaries were so beautiful. padang was no stranger city to me. i spent five years doing my undergraduate there. how come it was only now i realized the beauty those estuaries possessed. they were the same estuaries i passed on my going to and forth bukittinggi-padang for the past decade, the same routes and the same railway bridge. sigh, it must be the election fever.
yes, even the speeding driver did not get my scold this time. i really hate speeding driver; they are my sworn enemy. apparently, everybody on board was in a good mood.we didn’t even realized it that we had entered lubuak aluang, a regency well-known for its tasty telur asin (salted duck egg) and sala lauak (fried balls made from a dough of flour mixed with various species of salt water fish). you know we are minangkabaunese are serious gastronomers. none will best our tasty [spicy] culinary (we he he he he).
suddenly, our driver pulled over and hurriedly got out of the car. there was a polling station next to a small stream separating the station and our bus. the driver hopped over the stream and walked straight to the first table he encountered; grabbed a ballot paper handed by the election officer; darted to the ballot booth; got out of the booth; half- ran to the bus; and started the bus. it was less than five minutes i bet.
back on the bus, a curious passenger asked, “so this is your kampung?”.
“yes, mam”, he answer cordially. “who did you voted for?”, another equally curious passenger shouted from the back.
“SBY”, he giggled.
like me, other passengers on the bus went home to bukittingi to vote. what a coincidence!
entering sicincin, another regency town well known for its fish nursery and various restaurants serving barbecued fish, we were greeted my more scenes of people pouring to the polling stations. i could not remember how many polling stations we had passed but every ten minutes drive, there would be bands of people walking in and out of a polling station.
what was unique about the polling station was their location. it could be a school, in a puskesmas (community health center) yard, near a lapau or a coffee shop, near a market, and near a slaughter house. despite the variation of the places where people erected the polling station, the common sight flagrantly seen was the presence of one or two policeman in their brown uniform or vigilant officers in their green khaki.
entering kayu tanam our nose was harassed by this sweet smell of pinyaram, another snack made of rice flour mixed with brown sugar and other undisclosed ingredient to the outsider. yeah, the bus was air conditioned yet the driver opened the window on his side to let the smoke coming from his burning cigarette. so good was the mood, i didn’t even complain about this heavy misdemeanor.
again, after fifteen minutes, another smell capable of watering our mouth came billowing from a dangerous turn in the Valley of Anai. it was the smell of perkedel jagung (savoury corn pancake) and serabi beras (sweet smooth rice pancake). well, that dangerous turn by cliff , known as kelok perkedel, was a heaven for hungry passengers coming from padang. customarily, every driver will stop there and let the sellers of the snack enter the bus and offer their merchandise to the passengers. the combination of exhaustion from hours on the move on the side of the travelers and the cool air of the valley was enough to help scores of perkedel sellers (most of them are jobless [if selling perkedel is not a job]) survive day by day.
i was wondering who these sellers voted as their president. what i knew was whoever their choice was must be responsible for improving those men’s meager lives.
another twenty minutes drive passing crazy spirallic road and deadly turns along the valley of anai, we safely reached padang panjang, the city where i completed my three years boarding islamic junior high school. it was ten thirty and it was so quite.
padang panjang was always a serene city. located between a more famous bukittingi and a more bustling padang, this city has to accept its predestined fate to be a city of just-to-drop-by (my own word o.k.). yeah despite its position as a transit city, padang panjang does not enjoy prosperity and development a transit city or port like singapore or malacca should have. this beautiful and cool padang panjang cannot beat bukittinggi for tourism and trade and it has a long way to go to match padang in terms of sophistication. however, no place in west sumatra can beat this city for its sate (another spicy food for your information). and so religious the people of padang panjang are, this city holds the records on the existence of so many boarding islamic school in it. so, if you have a too-difficult-to-handle sons and daughters just send them to this city (as most of the case when i studied there).
the next ten minutes we waved good bye to padang panjang and entered koto baru. brrr……i could feel the cool breeze coming from either mount merapi or singgalang caressing my skin. koto baru is an important place for those who want to climb the two mountains i’ve mention before. they will set their base there, buy supply for a day or two days hikings and get some rest if their mountaineering has done. merapi is an active volcano but singgalang boasts a large lake on the area which is supposed to be its volcanic crater. it can never cough hot lava no more. one more thing, koto baru is also famous for its bika (yup! another food). for me, it is not the taste that thrill me but the way they cook it. they cook the dough in an earthen ware. so what’s so special about that? they put the burning log on the top of the ware and heat the bottom of the ware by using burning charcoal only.
it was only another fifteen or twenty minutes before reaching bukitting and i was getting anxious. i kept on checking my wristwatch. the source of my ants in pants was we needed to pass padang lua to get to the bukittingi bus terminal. even though it was the election day, padang lua, the most important traditional market in west sumatera would not stop pulsing even for a single second. as a result, we would have to brace ourselves for a gridlock in the street passing the market.
that market, despite the trillion rupiahs circulating in it every day, has a very ugly face. my parents run their petty business there and i also grew up there. muddy surface especially when it is rainin is just an every day treat. the smell of the rotten vegetables i’ve learned to love since my childhood will forever linger assaulting noses of market goers. lack of sanitary facility i’ve dealt with since my tender age is not news. (i’ve known various size of human penis since i was 5 because when the nature call most men in the market prefer going to the waste land just next to my parents’s veggi stall than going to the nearest equally dirty musholla) and….the list is on and on and i do hope the next president will have to think about how to improve things in that market where thousands people earn their living there.
leaving the gridlock behind, our bus manage to reach the terminal at 11 a.m. i hoped off the bus and half-ran crossing the super busy street of aua kuniang, another important business centre (and inter city bus terminal) in west sumatera. the condition of this so called business center is not far from that of padang lua. their illness is the same “mismanagement” if not ” lack of management” or “no vision for improvement” despite the trillions of rupiahs circulating in that biggest convection centre in sumatera.
in a minute i was already on my way to my kampung. i kept pestering the driver to be quick. “faster please, i need to vote” i told my driver and he understood it well.
in 3o minutes i got to my polling station. i was greeted by the officers and told me to be quick. “we are about to close”, they kidded with me.
i dont know about other indonesians, but on last wednesday i was so spirited. i was busy comparing my country with our more “prosperous” neighboring countries . singaporeans and malaysians despite their economic prosperity never enjoy this luxury of choosing their leader directly. they might have the tallest twin erections on earth or the most effective mass transportation system on earth. but in terms of democracy, they are no where near us. it is something to be proud of. i belied that economy can grow fast with healthy democracy supporting a country.
well, indonesia, with its striking beauty and apparent ugliness, i love this part of the world i was born in.
this post will be started with the word: penetration.
well, whatever association you may have about that word, just wait and read until the end of this post why i start this post with “penetration”.
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i came to university this morning swollen eyes and carrying the trace of a whole night sobbing.
someone’s died this week. yes michael jackson has passed away, but it was not his death which prompted me to cry. someone’s mother died this week. she is a somebody’s wife and the grandmother of ten cute little garrulous children. the dead lady was the mother of a senior lady lecturer and the wife of that lady’s father who has also been lecturing at my department for the last fifty years. for your information, they’ve been married for almost a half century. when we came to his house to pay our last respect to the deceased, he looked so distraught. what a gentlemen! he cried while telling us and re-telling us how he has passed so many ups and downs with the wife.
it was really a mourning morning.
i was mourning myself: not for her death but for my shattered dream.
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no. not yet. the penetration part will not appear in lines to come. please be patient.
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i’ve been waiting for this chance to come for months. i’ve bought my ticket, two ways. i was supposed to fly to KL yesterday but for one thing i will not disclose in this post i am still in padang now, choked with tears.
crying for six days in a row is apparently the way how i express this biggest disappointment of the semester. up to this very time i am typing my post, i still refuse to pick up any call from just anybody sending a sheer panic to my family back home in bukittinggi. i know they will ask me to stop mourning. some kid sisters called me “stupid” to cry over things which have made me cry. one of them simply asked “where is my jagoan sister?” a friend heartlessly commanded me to “forget it”.
i, delvi wahyuni, am still powerless to stop these tears drops from rolling on my cheeks. i am broken. nelangsa, that’s how my national tongue term it.
Ancient Horace said carpe diem quam minimum credula postero. yes, i am afraid tomorrow will betray me. that’s way i had to fly to KL yesterday. but i didn’t. now i become more afraid that tomorrow will betray me.
this sadness eats me up inside. i even cried when watching our final presidential debate. feeling sober.
i’ve come to few funeral this weeks. so many deaths. that’s why i had to fly to KL yesterday but i didn’t. i pray hard tomorrows will have no slightest idea to betray me. my heavily made up eyes can never hide my sorrow.
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so, why does this post start with penetration?
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yesterday, when we were preparing to go to the just-being-left-by-life-wife senior lecturer, four of us were busy chatting in front of the office pantry. so, this boy, a teaching assistant had been missing for sometimes and appeared again yesterday to join us to the mourning house (is it the calling?) that day. he told us he did not turn out for almost two weeks because his doc diagnosed him with dengue symptom. in short, he had to get some rest to recover.
inevitably, my wretchedness (for missing my flight to KL) did not deter my mischievous speech.
“so boy, the mosquito was successful to penetrate your skin huh?!!” i said coolly.
i felt cool but, the two ladies, one’s married and the other used to be so, jumped to the ceiling hearing me pronouncing pen-i-treyt.
“ah delvi! what a word u use! penetration is the ending act in making love”, she said whispering.
the other lady looked at me with amazement how a delvi, an anak perawan (i mean, unmarried) could mouth such a taboo word.
the boy also looked a bit frazzled with the word i’d just uttered.
for those who could not imagine how amazed they were with the word i used, here is the best physical description i could present”
the three of them stared at me. of course their eyes were widely open as did their mouth. this physical condition lasted for at least ten seconds and only after that a lady broke the ice by whispering to me the sexual association of that word. she then sat in one of the chair near the pantry and gulped her iced water.
i stayed cool and defended my choice of word. i reasoned that penetration does not have to be necessarily associated with the act of sexual intercourse (again they looked at me with amazement upon hearing another taboo- should-be-pronounced-in-whispering-mode word). i told them to listen to the football commentators when they give their skillful comments on how the first half-time of the match is. “they will shamelessly say: Kaka did a lot of penetration attempts into the heavily guarded centre field of Internaziole bla bla bla..see…..there is nothing wrong with my choice of word”, i showed them my wry ear to ear grin.
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ah! but i don’t see the word penetration fit anywhere in your long winded, emotionally laced post of how sorrowful you are!
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yes! the fact that i m not going to KL has shrouded me with agony. look at my swollen eyes. have some mercy on me please! could not eat. going thru sleepless nights six days in a row! gosh billy bob joe!! i’ll be dead soon if not plotting to beat tomorrow so it could never betray me! i need to win or i’ll die.
i badly need some supports to stand up but the whole world seems not to understand me. or is it me who cannot emulate well on what i want?
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oh ja? but what does it has to do with penetration?
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okay. because robert herrick has just risen from his grave and created so many impersonates in my facebook or yahoo messenger account and in my kampung. they, in unison, spit this line:
GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer ;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry :
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.
what i hate about this is they take the poem literally. what more? being a perawan, a maiden, limits my space and freedom. i cannot wear certain color of lipstick coz only married ladies are culturally allowed to used it (i never bring my red classic lipstick to bukittinggi “or else” mom said); i even may not say “penetration”!
hope now you get it why i start this post with penetration!
