Walking in Jakarta

20 Nov 2023

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They say this city is not a walking city, it is a city of jams and smog and gridlock.  A city of inevitabilities; polluted rivers where the water sparkles an alien green. 

Where old locks are no longer tangents to the sea but turn into quizzical artefacts, letting nothing in or out. A city where the Dutch trading company, the VOC, grew large and fat and guzzled upon itself, lost its capital and sank beneath the waves. 

This city began as settlements at the mouth of the Ciliwung, christened Batavia against rifle and cannon fire, a violent baptism. A city that began as a walled township with locks and canals. A mirror of Amsterdam, a giant complex of warehouses and tree-lined boulevards. 

A city of scudding motorcycles and scolding taxis, where there’s no pedestrian crossings at traffic lights. A city where only the poor walk and wait at bus-stops. A city where you measure time in hours and not minutes. 

They say there is no joy in the journey of this city, that every step is a negotiation between cracked slabs of pavement and layabout power lines. 

But they don’t tell you about how soft the light sits at certain hours. 

How there is something unbridled in the small roads and smaller houses. 

How a slum is alive with joys of daily life and not a despondent shanty of sorrow. 

This is a city of many stories; of people and the places they inhabit, of surprising corners and unexplored alleys. 

Where signs don’t always point to a destination and getting lost is a pleasure. 

A city where you can be.