View Point: Lebaran pains: Why is it so hard to be holy

Julia Suryakusuma ,  Jakarta   |  Wed, 10/08/2008 10:28 AM  |  Opinion

Idul Fitri, or Lebaran as it's also known, has come and gone. It will be back again, and that's a worry: Doing this holy day thing ain't as easy as it sounds!

Lebaran is supposed to be all about being with family, sharing love, responsibility and forgiveness with them in order to forge closer ties. Well, obviously to do all that, you and your family gotta be together. Duh.

And that's the catch -- getting together ain't always easy in Jakarta. A month ago I wrote about the plight of the mudikers, the people who make arduous, sometimes life-threatening efforts, to return to their home village and their families. Those of us who remain in Jakarta are either smart (because we avoid the rush) or lucky (because our families are in Jakarta), so it should be way easier for us. The streets are deserted due to the mass exodus, which significantly reduces the population of the Big Durian every Idul Fitri, so it should be a breeze to get around, right?

Wrong. Most service industries are closed or unavailable during Lebaran. This includes just about any transport service you can imagine, since the people who work in them also want to be with their families (outrageous, I know).

I found all this out the hard way when I lent my car to my son, Adit, who had come from Singapore, with his wife, Joan, to spend Lebaran with me, my (widowed) mother and my brother's family. Yup, we're a small family, but all the more reason to be close.

So every year we gather at my mother's house in Bekasi, West Java. Adit and Joan wanted to get there early to help mom prepare for the family gathering as (needless to say) her maid had gone mudik. They had wanted to go by taxi, but none were available in the morning as all the taxi drivers had mudiked-off or were performing Ied prayers. That's when I made the fatal mistake of lending Adit and Joan my car, thinking Tim (my husband) and I could follow by taxi later.

That's when the trouble started.

I guess the phenomenon is universal -- religious holidays are never an easy time to get transport. As we waited for nonexistent taxis, Tim told me how he once found himself in India trying to travel from Mumbai to Poona during Divali, the Hindu festival of lights. Unable to get a taxi for love or money, he had to settle for the world's slowest bajaj, driven by an old bearded pensioner. Tim is tall, and had to squeeze himself and his bags in the back, bits of both sticking out the sides.

It was slow, bumpy, spine-cracking and ... humiliating ride. Why? On an isolated country road, they were overtaken by a troupe of monkeys who strolled past them before disappearing rapidly over a hill, leaving the bajaj puttering along in their dusty wake -- at least they weren't tortoises!

But a bajaj or a tortoise might have been better than the taxi we finally got, which was old, battered and obviously had a terminal axle problem. The driver, by contrast, seemed barely old enough to get a license and had no idea where he was going.

So when we finally made it onto the toll road it seemed a relief -- until, suddenly, the car bonnet burst open at high speed, smashing into the windshield and shattering it. Luckily, there were no cars behind us, as we swerved wildly (and blindly) across the road, or we would have added to the Lebaran day road toll recorded by the National Police.

Our poor, prepubescent taxi driver was trembling in shock. He must have felt pretty crushed too, at the thought of having sacrificed his Lebaran day to get extra cash, only crashing instead. Lucky it was just his bonnet and windshield, and nothing more serious. Ah, yes, we Indonesians, we always count our blessings, especially on Lebaran, the holy day! Just to make sure we gave him a big fat tip out of sympathy.

After waiting for some time in the scorching heat by the side of the toll road, we finally managed to get another taxi, even more rickety than the first.

Our new driver didn't believe in using signals and drove at very high speed, zigzagging back and forth, cutting across lanes and tailgating like it was competitive sport. He screeched to a halt whenever the car in front of us so much as slowed. Tim and I were clutching onto the seats for dear life. In a squeaky voice I asked him, "How fast are we going?" "Don't know," Tim replied in an equally squeaky voice, "His speedo's broken." Great.

Then, without warning, the driver swerved to the left and escaped like a cork from a champagne bottle at Jati Asih, one stop before the exit to my mom's house. The road he chose was basically gravel poured into a strip of earth between two rows of concrete houses.

I told the driver he had taken the wrong exit, but, despite our protests, he stubbornly insisted that this was the correct road. Of course he had to be right, never mind that I had been to my mother's more than a thousand times. The journey now took longer, and that meant a bigger fare. In any case, as there were no side roads, our fate was sealed. So, with no escape possible, there was nothing to do but shut up, close our eyes and hang on, which we duly did until we arrived. No tip for this driver!

As we walked in my mother's door, poorer, paler, shaky and seriously late, my mind was hardly full of holy thoughts and the joy of family reunion.

For the first time I began to really understand what all those mudikers -- yes, taxi drivers included -- go through each year to be with their loved ones. Turns out, being holy ain't easy in Jakarta, especially at Lebaran.

The writer is the author of Sex, Power and Nation. She can be contacted on jsuryakusuma@gmail.com

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