Visuals (Blind Beggar led in JKT)

What was unusual here was the bare feet. Both parties unshod. And more unusual still the hot-trotting from the angkot along the bitumen and down the dark lane. The hand on the shoulder of the woman and off the pair went. Chap like that had no right to smile so brightly, but smile wide and bright he certainly did. The blind were commonly escorted in Indonesia by their kin for begging. After alighting from the angkot the woman might have needed to explain herself and her companion to the driver: some brief words before they turned and went without need of payment. Down the lane the first few stops failed to produce an offering—a chap seated on a motor-cycle and stall-holders declining. Following a brief exchange the third or fourth enquiry brought alms and after that the woman needed to be called to stop in order to be caught. Why the trotting was the question. Had the woman left something on the fire at home? In the earlier angkot the scene outside the rear window had captivated as usual. Again in the midst of this humanity in Tanah Abang the returning thought had been what could possibly be the value of portraiture in such a setting. (A young art student back in Singapore was embarking on serious study and there had been a good deal of conversation on the subject.) The telling visuals here would be the carters on the roads: the lads with their heavy fabric piles on the trolleys, the old women carrying on their heads and the food-cart vendors with their adapted bicycle wheels crossing over the top of the road dividers. The traffic in Jakarta was familiar across the globe; still a shot out the rear window of one of the angkots taking the motorcycles pressing close after maghrib might deliver something, especially the faces of the riders inches from the glass. The cheap street prostitutes on the flyover on Tubun deserved some kind of memorial too. For them the invasive camera was out of the question; some kind of contemporary Picasso frieze the only possibility. Some of the lipsticked visages recalled Albert Tucker's postwar social meltdown with the introduction of the American GIs and their chocolate bars and stockings. Yesterday afternoon a stout threesome had parked themselves on a bench on the turn from the river for the bikers rounding there, garish athletic tops red, orange and yellow it may have been like a traffic light sequence. Ni had never seen such scenes as we had passed in the Tanah Abang slum on the first morning. Only on television, she said.