I tell you I’m just a lonesome babe in the wood / so lady be good to me / oh please have some pity / I am all alone in this big city

(“Oh Lady be Good”, written by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, popularized by Ella Fitzgerald)

A friend of mine was heartbroken. A male friend she met at her office, with whom she had been close for several years and for whom she had been developing special feelings, had to leave Indonesia to work in a faraway foreign country. This man also recently committed himself to a romantic relationship with another woman, thus crushing my friend’s hopes for any kind of romantic involvement with him.

She confessed that having worked for several years at a multinational company, she found it hard to connect with her colleagues. Being an introspective, intelligent woman, she finds her colleagues’ small talk tedious. She also went through a series of problems a few years ago. She felt she could not disclose these problems to either her friends or her colleagues. However, as you will discover later, she trusted this man enough to confide in him and he responded compassionately.

Not only was he a trustworthy enough person that she felt she could share her life’s problems with him, he also opened up a whole new world to her: of sports, books, cuisine and so much more. She felt a door opened up to her; she also found a precious connection that not only helped her stave off her loneliness while living alone in this big and busy city but also nourished her intellectually and spiritually.

So when he jetted off to a faraway country with a new girlfriend in his arms, she felt as though the sky was falling. How could she cope working a stressful job for 12 hours plus at her office, surrounded by colleagues who alienated her? She began losing sleep for a few nights in a row and was crying constantly because she could not stop thinking of him, she told me. She cried again this evening when her other friends and I — who are part of the same book club — joined forces together to comfort her.

My professor told me recently that she had handled a client who fell victim to an online scam that cost her Rp 1 billion (US$708,215). The bogus online visa services portal promised to help anybody wishing to resettle in Europe get their working visas issued at the cost of Rp 1 billion. But why was my professor’s client so desperate to flee her hometown all the way to Europe? She was heartbroken after her boyfriend abandoned her and she feared she would never find love again. Moreover, almost every corner of Jakarta reminded her of (now painful) romantic memories with her ex, thus accentuating her sense of loss and loneliness; hence the hasty decision to use the bogus services offered by the website. 

We live in Jakarta. According to 2015 data from Statistics Indonesia, 10.18 million people inhabited this city, not to mention an additional 3 million who lived in Jakarta’s satellite cities but flocked to the capital during workdays to earn a living. They spend more than 12 hours working in the office, not to mention two to three hours commuting every day, so by the time they have finished their daily shifts, they return home exhausted, their energy drained of any reserves to connect with other people.

Some of us live in shoebox-type rented rooms to circumvent the exhausting daily commute requirement, returning to our suburban homes during weekends only, hence the term “weekend husbands” and “weekend wives” for us shoebox dwellers who are married.

While returning to your spouse only occasionally during the weekends might help bolster romance and fuel the flame of your sexual desire, for the rest of us single professionals living in these boarding houses, away from our beloved families, the modus operandi of day-to-day life in Jakarta can send us into extreme loneliness and isolation.

Jakarta is also a capitalist-consumerist-industrialist city where human relationships are highly distorted by pragmatism, materialism and pure promiscuous sexual opportunism. These tendencies make us feel like we have to remain vigilant and on guard all the time, lest other people will take advantage of us, because we will never know whether they truly mean well or have some ulterior motives belying their friendliness. This extreme cautiousness blocks us from forming true connections, which require us to be vulnerable. We get lonelier along the way. No wonder we panic when we lose our best friends or romantic partners as we all know that it is no easy task forming deep and meaningful connections in this city.

Get a sense of just how difficult it is to form genuine relationships in Jakarta by watching Lucky Kuswandi’s gloomy 2014 film Selamat Pagi, Malam (In the Absence of the Sun).

Paul Agusta’s 2018 film Kisah Dua Jendela (Daysleepers), meanwhile, seems to highlight the possibility that empathy for our fellow urbanites (as opposed to having to remain on guard and suspicious of other people all the time) and creative endeavors can open channels through which we can rediscover where we truly belong with other people. His film seems to offer an antithesis to the mostly exploitive urban relationships portrayed in Lucky’s film.

I witnessed this rare moment when we urbanites could enjoy a warm connection this evening, as my friends and I — part of the same book club, having all been member since its inception four years ago — came together for an impromptu meeting at a Jakarta cultural center to support our heartbroken friend. After talking to us, our female friend became so overwhelmed with sorrow that she cried as we all walked into the black box theater to watch a show. Her female friend, part of the same book club, hugged her. It was truly a beautiful moment to watch: friends providing each other solace. I was freezing my frame of that moment. It was a testament to the undying and timeless love that we have which, despite all our business and individual concerns, allow us to gather and offer support for somebody in need of help.

I also experience lots of kindness from total strangers, not only in Jakarta and Bali but also during my solo business trips to big urban cities overseas: Singapore and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. As journalist Famega Syavira Putri writes in her 2018 travelogue/memoir Kelana: Perjalanan darat dari Indonesia sampai ke Afrika (The Adventure: Travels from Indonesia to Africa by Land), she felt touched by the kindness of strangers everywhere she went on her trip covering over 17 countries. This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

Start really seeing the people around you. They are real humans with real feelings. Talk to them. Ask them what they love, what makes them tick. Get into what troubles them or upsets them. Then you will find your soul animated again by the truth that no matter how isolated you feel at a particular moment (we all go through these difficult times and we will), we are part of this living, breathing web.

The truth remains until we draw our last breath, no matter how trying our circumstances might be at a particular moment.

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