Street Speak (Jogja)

In the last 24 hours in Jogja the street spoke something of its former self. 

As happens travelling in foreign parts, the particular day & hour had completely slipped. Suddenly arriving back in the middle of the gang with Suze and the Majalengka kids, the crowd of men appeared at the other end, scores of them in their bright attire filling the passage. More men entered as we progressed and when we began to pass pressed close, inevitably resulting in brushes against each other. At the losmen younger lads in some kind of white tunic top, perhaps from one of the hotels, had even come into the eating hall of Adhi's and lay bunched over the tiling, many propped against the wall fixed on their screens. Back in G Serai too it was always awkward walking against the tide Fridays as either the men were going across for the prayer, or leaving afterward. It was an unfortunate, but inevitable division. Head bowed, slowed pace and turning aside like a sail was the best that could be managed.

 

Mid-eve walking up to see the becak driver Agus an old man seated on the paving called one back for a closer look; called back and detained in order that he might be acknowledged somehow. The coin he used for his amusement seemed smaller than the one rupiah; shinier and smaller, perhaps viewed from standing height. The chap, in his mid and possibly late 70s, had perfected the spinning of the piece across the smooth surface squares. Standing the coin upright with his thumb, it may have been his middle finger giving the flick. How the glinting disk spun on its axis a foot or more, causing the chap to stretch reaching for it after each turn. Marvellous. When the man noticed the admiration he was equally chuffed, bowing modestly a moment, before raising his smiling face and extending a small, brown, leathery hand. Doubly marvellous.

 

And then the morning’s plastics scavenger he may have been. The action that unfolded there was so impressive, so compelling and overwhelming, that memory of the man’s occupation could not be recalled. Possibly it was drinks he was hawking, or indeed collection of plastics. The man may have walked barefoot, though in the city usually only the odd ancient remained unshod. The becak driver he approached was sitting in his conveyance with others parked in the gutter. That man was well into his 70s, if not pitched beyond. The younger came up to the edge of the path and lent in to the driver, reaching his shoulder and around to his back, patting and caressing. Ten or a dozen touches were made by the brown hand over the blue tee, not including between times the alternating rubbing & squeezing. The words added were inaudible over the distance and would have been mostly unintelligible in any case. Plastics must have been the passerby’s focus, otherwise he would have presented the driver an offering.  Very likely the dirty white poly bag over his shoulder had immediately dropped from memory.

 

NB. It was the eve of the ancestral Saints Day back in the village, St Petka; Paraskeve for the Greeks.