Anonymous -Jakarta - Chapter 6 - The Angel of Jakarta

Dwelled in the iterations of thoughts, I kept on walking along the Black Waters...

This girl playing around me has only one small card – possible from some bins and she sits down every 1min to scratch on it with a stone and then put her toy box – which had some carrum coins in it. Her most exciting game was to take them all out – 4 green, 1 yellow and 1 white - and put them back by grouping by their colors. And she laughs. Such an awesome, small world. No complaints, no tears- life seems to be too short for all those for her. I leaned on a handrail over the bridge, yes, with black water flowing just beneath – and kept on watching her. She was singing- or may be talking – to herself with a side look to me to make sure she is making me happy and a smile, if I wasn’t smiling.

I was thrown deep into the well of ideas – how to make her happier – I wanted to give her some gift – I knew she will know the value of that whatever I give. Not money – money never solves an issue – it just travels from one hand to other and is only a byproduct of a habit and a thought process. I got the idea, but now the issue is if I try to buy that for her, she might have already left by the time I come back. I don’t really know how these streets work – streets are all different, unlike the towns, which all look the same all around the world. Each street carries its own soul. I left it to nature – I want to gift her, that’s it. The walk was longer than I expected – few streets, pedestrian flyovers and it took a while before I come back. The signs were moderate – staff speaking English in the store to assist me but stores going farther as I reach closer to them – but I knew I have to gift her this painting book. She has the talent.

As the gut feeling, she was gone – the footpath on the bridge was filled by her absence. I kept on walking through the possible ways the angel of street might have flown. No sign. Ok. Let’s do one more circle– sometimes nature tests the desperate. I full round of 15 min walk. Yes! The angel is back, now with a small pot of noodles in her hand with a big spoon, compared to her size. One spoon soup, two strokes on her card. Repeat. I watched for couple minutes and then called her close to me. She came very close – and I opened the bag to give her the coloring book and crayons. I sat with her in a Martian concrete block. We started to color.

With my little angel

Her eyes became even brighter. They opened wide enough and she managed to finish the first page in less than 5 min. That’s when I realized when you feed water to a dry throat, you should give sip by sip. I turned to the first page back and painted with her all the missing spots – and I saw she is a good follower and a quick learner! I had to tell her only once to get a box filled with the color I want. Next page took atleast 15 minutes, with the 10 year? Old filling every detail with new color.

Time to say good bye to my little angel – she was busy coloring and her mom and elder brother was there – so now I can resume my walks. I moved a few tens of meters away along the bridge and took a turn and leaned back again on the handrail, immersed in thoughts and some true happiness from heart. In a few minutes, she ran into me – asking something – which I had absolutely zero clue what it was - but I had already learnt, some things more beautiful when left wordless. She didn’t know I can’t talk– we didn’t need a language before – may be because the humanity shares a universal language. After three times, she lost the patience and laughed and ran back to her mom – who was following her by then. There was golden kitty patrolling with them – she hugged and that body guard suddenly turned in to a pet cat, crawling on the floor for cuddles. I waved at her and they both waved back to me with a bright smile – possibly the brightest I have seen so far.

Anonymous -Jakarta - Chapter 5 - The Black Waters

The day doesn’t always have to start from morning – sometime they walk from the sunset back to the dawn. One of the best things that excite me here in Jakarta is the ability to see the world through the eyes of people who live in silent worlds. Here no one – or may be very few – understand English. In city I can use the Google translator and type in English to show them the Indonesian version so that I can eat or buy something. Not considering the fact that hardest challenge I faced in Indonesia is to find some vegetarian food. The food chain starts only from fish to top. Though in villages where there is no coverage, even AI fails, and I become an ancient human to use the linguistics to close my fingers towards mouth for food and other intuitive signs to show my needs.

I remember seeing green match box-vans all the way last night in Jakarta which I assumed to be Taxis. Today my first destination (after surrundering myself to eat fish to avoid starving)was 2 hours to rural west Jakarta, for a meeting. Google maps showed me bus routes and I was waiting for a while but only to realize the taxi-vans were in fact the bus transport. That was fun – to sit in a match box , which stops every 200m and waits for people to come from a 100m far and takes and drops people all the way. The streets looked similar to Bangalore Rural areas. I sat for almost 1 and half hours in it and came out with a little bent (little more I should say) back bone.

Grab scooter rides
- Jakarta

Next part was to grab a Grab scooter – sort of bike version of Uber – to take me to the even ruraler areas of West Java. Google terribly failed. It took us through places where there were no roads and missed that real turns, but thanks to the phone number I had, we managed somehow to make it there. The rider showed all the characters of typical village minds –honest, helpful, welcoming and with a little fear written deep inside.

Past the meeting, the driver of the company CEO I just met dropped me to a 20 min farther Stasiun Kerata – Train station. Now to the real Jakarta rush - train was little packed when I started the ride but eventually became fully packed with almost no space to open the door and dense platforms. Long queues of Tanahabang station escalators represented the city of 10million people very well. Off the station I was off for a walk- just being part of the rush – except that only I didn’t know where I am going.

I kept on walking passing the waste-water channels, which seemed like pretty fresh-water canals on maps. Maybe they used to be and later on became victims of industrialization, just like in most developing countries. There were kids playing in them – in contaminated water of black color, seeing which half of the civilized people might even throw-up. Aren’t we all humans? How can someone have more right than others to live on the planet. How can one human being love the same thing others hate? How can kids with everything cry for new toys while the ones without food are happier ? Is greed, the thirst to have more, just a side-effect of the civilized dopamine doses?

To be continued...