PARADOX IS BLISS!

By Tomas Soejakto
June 24, 2007

On a platform at the Jatinegara train station an old woman sat. She sat on a piece of ragged cloth next to a garbage can, at the platform between the first and the second railways. She was very old and blind.

At 3.30 in the morning I watched her pressing and pounding a plastic bag containing what seemed to be her remaining possession, mostly clothings by the look of it. The old woman pressed and pounded this plastic bundle to make it smaller and tied it up so it wouldn’t expand again. The idea – I think – was to compress the bundle and leave the least room for air. I don’t know why but that’s what she seemed to be doing. Then, after all the pressing and the pounding, she would lie down and use the bundle of clothes as a pillow.

She tossed and turned in her troubled effort to fall asleep. I don’t think she was satisfied on how her bundle supported her head and neck. I don’t know. But after a minute she sat up and did everything that she just did all over again, oblivious to her surroundings. This time she loosened a piece of cloth from her head band and struggled to fit the bundle in the cloth. I don’t know what she’s trying to accomplish, but of course she failed to fit the bundle in the cloth because it was a pretty big bundle and a pretty small cloth. When she failed, she opened the bundle (thus letting air in and destroyed all her hard work in compressing it), pressed and pounded it again, closed and tied it up, pinched it here and there, and tried very hard to turn it into one, very solid bundle.

Then she’d lay down and sleep on it again, this time using her weight to – once again – compress the size of the bundle.

When I left a little before 6 am, the old blind woman was on her eighth attempt. In my opinion, that bundle wasn’t getting smaller. But she was doing it beyond reason anyway.

There were many other interesting things happening in a dingy train station at dawn. It was like the whole city could be represented by that train station alone. All the rot and the corruption and decadence. There was also happiness’ struggle to squeeze in (there was a small family sitting on the platform floor, on spread newspapers, trying to have a humble breakfast. They were laughing and having a good time. They were waiting for a train, by the looks of it).

When I arrived with my father (we were picking up mom), thugs grereted us in the parking lot. I guess being a thug is a job too (Thugship? Thugger? Thug Officer?), and these thugs got the graveyard shift. They weren’t being menacing or anything, they just wanted parking money. More than the usual lot, anyway. They even spared a smile for us. My father came there more often than me and it’s clear that he got used to them. Me? I was shivering in the morning air, avoiding eye contact. I bet they could break my back like a toothpick. It’s funny how you can feel threatened by these eccentric class in society that we so often refered as ‘trash’.

Of course the highlight of that trip was still the old blind woman; I was sitting in a row of seats in front of the toilet when my eye caught her. A mangy cat was rubbing him/herself against my leg all the while. My father wouldn’t sit down and got to smoking, and like me, he’s observing things too. And just like me, you can’t see any kind of reaction on his face about the things he saw and heard, all you could see are tired eyes and a slight smile.

It was a busy dawn in the Jatinegara train station, so there was a lot to see.

A few young men moved to sit on my right and was busy talking in thick Javanese while sharing a cigarette. They were dressed like any growing teenager with an identity crisis would dress, involuntarily declaring their social status (one had patched jeans with ‘Punk!’ embroidered on the ass and another wore a colorful sweater with a bright annarchy symbol and Curt Cobain portrait… Oh, and one of them had jeans that didn’t go down as far as his ankles. They all had funny hair).

It was hard not to notice them because I like observing people (and they weren’t trying NOT to be noticed, anyway). I tried to make sense of what they were talking about, but I only caught – from the tone of their conversation – that they were upset about somebody. A disagreement or probably a fight had happened. All the while, I was still watching the old woman pressing and pounding her plastic bundle.

Life, after all, is a treat for your senses.