Letter: Longing for old Jakarta

Mon, 05/05/2008 11:24 AM  |  Reader's Forum

Being born in Jakarta, I have seen Jakarta grow from a "big village" to a "megapolitan" city. Even in the early 1960s, we still saw vast stretches of forests, rice fields and marshes and swampy areas in Central Jakarta.

There used to be streams or rivulets crisscrossing Jakarta. The Ciliwung River cutting across Jl. Hayamwuruk and Jl. Gajah Mada in downtown Jakarta was a place where women washed their laundry and children -- like myself -- engaged in kampong-style swimming.

Understandably, the water was still flowing profusely toward the sea and we never heard of such terms as "pollution". Another stream I used to play in was the one running along the place where Trisakti now stands.

This river, which must be a tributary of the Banjir Kanal River, led to Pesing. To my chagrin, this stream, along with other similar ones, was "plugged up" to make way for highways, and similarly many marshy and swampy areas in Jakarta were eliminated for construction of residential areas and other structures.

About 32 years ago, Sumadi of TVRI interviewed then Jakarta governor Ali Sadikin about habitual floods that hit Jakarta. The governor said "what used to be the abodes of frogs had all been wiped away to make way for human habitation, and so on ...." Mind you, they were already talking about floods circa 1976.

Another thing: I wondered why they demolished Hotel Duta Indonesia (formerly Hotel Des Indes) and on the site the Duta Merlin shopping center was built. Tourism was hardly mentioned when Des Indes was dismantled. In Singapore, a similar hotel with an imperial ambience is well preserved and lots of sweet older tourists stay in it.

When do we learn our lesson?

TATU FUAD MAULANI
Jakarta

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