“Seni Tembok”
The Street Art of Jakarta

Jakarta is surely a little piece of heaven for trigger-happy graffitologists. You can almost see them in your mind’s eye; the city’s young blood, tattooed and bodypierced, sporting Mohawks, bandanas, gel or whatever the day’s hip head-look is, lurking behind street corners with spray cans primed. All they need is the cover of darkness and they’re at it, transforming pockets of the city into explosions of artistic energy.

And the city is more than generous; every street-artist’s dream come true. Construction sites mushroom exponentially, affording vast sweeps of metal siding begging defacement. Boundary walls built high to afford privacy provide larger-than-life expanses of prized, if temporary, canvas. Concrete pylons holding up roads choked with traffic spawn some of the best work; it’s as if busy intersections crank up the pulse of the city’s street-art.

They are, in fact, the prime gallery spot, where an artist is guaranteed an audience of commuters all day long, well past conventional gallery closing times. The down-side, of course, is that nobody’s buying.

Not five years ago, I remember how this outburst of spontaneous art was severely curtailed, cleaned off almost before it was dry. Then suddenly one year, all that changed. The powers-that-be allowed that it might remain up for the duration of the Jakarta Art Festival, which ran for a bare week or two, immediately after which Operasi Clean Up The *&^%^&* Walls kicked in.

I had actually begun to document it, particularly the specimens at the Warung Buncit/Gatot Subroto intersection, as some of them were truly fine pieces of work and I had by then spent a small fortune on film and cuci-cetak (developing and printing), immersed in tracking the evolution of this very-new-to-Jakarta phenomenon. I didn’t miss a beat, noting changes in style, content and expression, and had amassed enough material to actually consider doing a heavily illustrated post-doctoral on walls.

Alas, that was before I was seduced by digital cameras. I was using a prized Nikon SLR, in those days before jpegs and tiffs, when my photographs suddenly fell prey to a rather vicious tropical jamur, a sort of mildewy sooty type fungus, definitely not the edible variety. Silently and stealthily, it identified, attacked and destroyed all 89,533 boxes of negatives and prints. I gave them a decent burial, and in the process, lost my entire collection of carefully documented street art in one fell swoop. As you can imagine, I was desolate and borderline suicidal for months after.

Back then, a lot of the pioneering examples looked hand-painted rather than sprayed on. Many carried a message, sometimes political, sometimes socio-cultural. And all of them were done on the run. Graffiti was frowned upon by the authorities in the good old days, and if you were caught in the act, it was Real Bad News. I never did understand why; these were singularly creative, striking oases of energy and exuberance amid the numbing urban sprawl.

Those artists knew better than most that exposure is fleeting, and their masterful creations would be lost to posterity following their brief moment of glory. Because soon enough, the Graffiti Cops would come along, and…such is the price of 15 minutes of street-art fame.

Fortunately, oblivion didn’t seem to deter them, and at last they have claimed their rightful place in the sun, as you’ll find each time you’re out in the streets. The Graffiti Cops have all been fired, you don’t see them hanging around street corners with cleaning materials at the ready any more. the walls are now alive with street-art, and the flavour-of-the-month for the past year or more has been anime-comic strip style.

Over time, you begin to recognize names: ‘Artcoholic’, ‘Sta’mint Crew’, ‘Mad Feat Karma’; so fame is not always fleeting; let’s hear it for the wielders of the spray-can! I have meanwhile retired my trusty old SLR and bonded with a nifty little digital cyberwotza. Suddenly, that post-doctoral on walls is looking like a distinct possibility again.

“Seni Tembok” translates to “Wall Art” in Bahasa Indonesia.

"aha" moment...

Xania June 2004 © Priya Tuli

Timing is everything. I know, I should be telling you something you don't know, but I rediscovered this little axiom tonight, when I was riffling through my vast collection of photographs of... groan... Greek doors!

I have more of the leprouschipped&peeling (deliciously ineluctable!) doors from my first trip in November 2001, and more brightshiny devoidofcharacterbutstillarresting doors from my last trip in June 2004.

How come, right? Timing!!! April/May is around the time things slowly start gearing up for the onslaught of the tourist season. Paint jobs, repairs, all that stuff. So when I got there in June, I found disappointingly faultless new paintwork, all bright and clean, awaiting the tourists. Gah!

By November, however, the meltemi has usually had its way with the paintwork, the sun has burned the high gloss down, the humidity and salt spray has done its magic and bingo! George Meis-type vistas, awaiting conversion to megalostacks of photographs.

Now that I've worked it out, I have a surefire way to avoid taking ANY more door shots. Go in June!













Xania June 2004 © Priya Tuli

Coffeetime!!! Ena kafe metrio, parakalo!

DeepblueGreekceramicKafemugs. Xania, Crete. June 2004 © Priya Tuli

Axx, coffee...but no, no more rhapsodies. Just the facts here today. And not too many, just enough to put a few hairs on a few chests.

I discovered Greek coffee has much in common with Indonesian coffee, or Java as the cognoscenti prefer to call it. (Java is actually just ONE variety...there's Bali, Toraja, Arabica, Robusta, Mandehling...and many more that I can't even remember, much less pronounce.) Mostly because they're both served strong, black and thick with coffee grounds.

In Greece, coffee is prepared the traditional way in a "briki", which is a dinky little copper or brass pot with a long handle. I think it has a neutral coating of tin on the inside, so the coffee doesn't react chemically with the copper/brass.

I'm no cordon bleu, and I could be wrong but I think this is how it happens: you put water in the pot, throw in some fresh ground coffee and some sugar, boil it up and pour it into a cup, mug or even your cupped palms, depending how masochistic you're feeling. Ouch, hotttt! And then you wait for the grounds to settle before drinking it, unless you want to spend all of next week picking them out of your teeth.

So basically, as you may have gathered, it's a thick mess with the grounds still in it. Much like Turkish coffee, but don't tell the Greeks I said that. The grounds were a bit unnerving for a friend I was travelling with, who shall remain anonymous. One sip, and that was the end of the whole affair. She went on a nomorecoffee jag for the rest of the trip, I think. It's fairly strong stuff, and yes you could stand a spoon or three in it, if you were that way inclined.

Indonesian Kopi Tobruk, which is how most Indonesian coffee is prepared, is less complicated because you just toss everything together in a mug: hot water, coffee, sugar if you want it. Now give it a good old stir. Again, you need to wait for the grounds to settle. Now, drink. Also fairly strong stuff, which makes me wonder how my Decaf-loving friend would take to it. Must remember to ask. Lin? Did you drink any in Crete at all? Or did you wimp out?!? Me, I grew much hair on my chest that trip...good strong coffee will do that to you.

An Ineluctable Progression of Doors...

© Priya Tuli

Among the squadrillion other reasons why I will never forget my first trip to Greece, are the 89,000 photos of doors I now have in my possession.

Practically anyone who's ever been to Greece would know exactly what I'm talking about. There is an ineluctable magic in those doors. The paint is often chipped and peeling, the surrounding walls often leprous and damp...and this is exactly why they make the most stupendously graphic visual images. As a matter of fact, the more old and leprous, the better. Ohhh look, there's another one!

You whip out your camera, and uh oh; that's a surefire signal for that multitude of little voices in your head to start on you. They've all become regular drones, nagging you in whiny tones ranging from baritone to soprano, "But do you really need one more photograph of a door?" and "This one looks exactly like about 23,000 others you have, down to the colour and number of panels!" and "What d'you plan to do with them all anyway? It's not as if you're George Meis, with a signature-postcard-and-calendar empire..." Hrmm. Being a reasonable sort, you let them all have their say. You mull over their observations and see the merit in them and you know what? They're right. Enough with the doors.

In fact, everywhere you look, there are photo-ops staring you in the face. There are faces, and fabric, and donkeys, and tavernas, and bouzouki, and cobbled streets, and cats, and beaches, and boats, andandand...butbutbut ohmygod, look at THIS door!!! It's so graphic!!! And there you go again.



© Priya Tuli

Fortunately, my last trip went a little better. The door count is down, the window count is up. I also found some shiny newly-painted doors, all acrylic emulsion or whatever it is they use to paint doors. So this was already a departure from the I-am-going-to-take-a-million-shots-of-these-wonderful-old-doors mode of the first trip.

Unfortunately, the high gloss is a bad idea because it bounces the light and the results are not always pleasing. To my mind, they lack depth and character and yes, most definitely, they entirely lack that deliciously tangible ineluctability (yesss, I love that word!) that the old, leprous ones smite you with. So ahem, yes I did take some more of those, too. But my next trip, for SURE, no more doors. None.
Not. A. Single. One.

© Priya Tuli

Axx Ithaki...

Sunburst over Ithaki...what a glorious welcome to the island at journey's end!

© Priya Tuli

When does an impulse turn into a passion? At what point does the change-over happen? I find the lines are often blurred; there is much in common between the two. Both involve following your heart. Your soul. The voices in your head. Often, the beat of a different drummer. You just HAVE to do it. There are no options, no choices. It's the only thing.

It might start with a thought, a sound, a colour, a smell...the trigger could be anything. Quietly, in the darkest recesses of your mind, it grows to monstrous proportions, unnoticed, over the years. Till one fine day it suddenly leaps up screaming, and engulfs you completely. You thrash around, powerless to resist. It sucks you in, chews you up and spits you out, and you pick yourself up and go after it. There is nothing else you can do. And so, a passion is born.

It was a bit like that with the poem.

Ithaki.
Magical journey of mythic proportions. Of ships and storms and high seas, of Cyclops and Laistrygonians, of challenges and discoveries and victories. And above all, of passion. For the journey of a lifetime...the journey of life.

It first touched me when I was 21, a poem shared by a friend over a revolting cup of coffee at the university cafeteria. I hastily scrawled it on the fly-leaf of a course-book, ripped out the page to keep it safe, and promptly lost sight of it.

Ah, but already it had seeded itself, unbidden and unmarked. When I re-discovered it nearly 15 years later, it seemed like an old friend...the words familiar but still new, as if read for the first time. Still with the power to bring a gleam to my eye, a rush of adrenalin surging through my corpus, and this pure impulse to GO! nownownow!! The meaning remained the same, yet the meaning had changed, with all that had passed in the years between.

I seemed closer now, further along on this journey of life, with 'Ithaki' almost within reach...but it would be another 8 years before I would actually get there. For one, I still didn't know that the island really existed. I truly believed it was just another Greek myth, like the countless others I had devoured during my schooldays, fascinated by all the complex relationships and fantastic tales...(those were the days before Dr Seuss and Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket, remember, all we had was good ol' Jabberwocky!)

Then, almost a quarter century (!) from the time I first discovered the poem, I found out that the island DOES exist, it is NOT just another myth about Odysseus and Penelope...and that's when it grabbed me by the throat. There really IS an Ithaki!! And I simply HAD to go there!!!

The voices in my head shouted out like a Greek chorus gone mad: GO GO GO!!! NOW NOW NOW!!! Butbutbut I was broke, and out of work...how would I do this? The voices just grew louder. (They talk to me all the time, it's when they shout I sit up and take notice!)

So...yes. I finally made it to Ithaki in 2001. And then again, in June 2004. And what was it like, this island home of Ulysses? Did it live up to its promise, was it worthy of the myths? I'd rather let the poem speak to you, as it spoke to me. And so, the journey continues...

Vathy, Ithaki...idyllic mythicalislandhome of Ulysses

© Priya Tuli

ITHAKA
When you set out for Ithaka
Ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops
Angry Posiedon - do not fear them :
such as these you will never find
as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare
emotion touch your spirit and your body...
...you will not meet them
unless you carry them in your soul,
unless your soul could raise them up before you.

Ask that your way be long.
At many a summer dawn to enter
- with what gratitude, what joy -
ports seen for the first time
to stop at Phoenician trading centres...
...to visit Egyptian cities,
to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.

Have Ithaka always in mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all that you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you the splendid journey
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn't anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.
So wise have you become, of such experience,
that already you'll have understood
what these Ithakas mean.
-Kavafis

Factoid: In English, it's Ithaka; in Greek, it's Ithaki. In English it's Ahh, in Greek, it's Axx!

"The answer is NO!!! Now, what did you want?!"

Gatos © Priya Tuli

It's a funny thing. Wherever I go, I seem to be a magnet for cats, dogs, 25 year olds, 86 year olds, refugee kids begging for money...and every single fruitcake within a 25,000 mile radius. But more on that later. I'm convinced it's either karmic, or to do with my aura.

Either way, despite regular aura-cleansing baths with Dead Sea Salts, incense burning rituals that last 3 hours a day and lighting enough candles to be declared a fire hazard by the local Anti-Arson Committee, my magnetic field is in full form thank you. To the extent I am currently harbouring 3 fruitcakes on my premises (okay two, if you don't count me), and another homeless kitten wandered in a couple of days ago. That brings the tally to 7 felines; soon, I shall have to move out of this house to to a bigger one.

Unfortunately, there is no known cure for my particular affliction. Though somebody recently told me there's a local shaman-type person (they're called 'dukun' in Indonesia) who lives in a cave in Central Java, and has had great success with curing people of all sorts of stuff, including hair growing on the palms of their hands. Which, as I'm sure you know, is the first sign of madness; the second sign of course, is what you're doing right now...checking your palms for signs of hair.

To get back to the cat in the picture, though, I assumed he'd respond to Gatos, being a Greek cat and all. There he was, perched on this pillar in Santorini, sunning himself. Lucky feline, to actually LIVE here! And I'd just bust up several month's worth of savings on my air fare just to get here! Ah, the little injustices of life...

Gatos had seen at least a decade, and was savvy enough to recognize, when I walked by, that a meal might possibly be forth- coming. Animals have a sixth sense for this sort of thing; they can spot a sucker from a mile.

Well, actually, I confess I'm guilty here. I did stop to talk to him for a moment, and since I was heading to the taverna next door for lunch, he must have intuited it. Or maybe it was just that dratted aura again. Whatever, he hopped off his sunning-spot and followed me. He made all the usual friendly overtures...mewing persuasively and rubbing his head against my leg, which I fell for like a ton of bricks as usual, and which also ensured him an order of fresh calamari. The taverna owner was obviously an old friend of his, too, because he got a side-order of some scraps of souvlaki as well. A proper 2-course meal! And he didn't even have to pay for it! Wottaluckycattski!

I ordered my usual saganaki and xorta, washed down with an ouzo. The guy at the next table leaned across and started up one of those "hello, where you from, how long you going to be here" type conversations. Innocuous enough, I thought, 2 tourists exchanging pleasantries, he seemed a nice friendly sort.

But hey ho...what's this?! 3 minutes into the conversation I realize I'm way out of my depth here...having exhausted his 20 words of English, our man has lapsed into his native Outer Congolese and is starting to get a tad excited. His monologue is now punctuated with a long, shuddering sob every few minutes, and he keeps shoving a hand at me, palm side up. I obligingly take a quick look at it. Clean palm, no hairs.

His agitation quotient is clearly rising, I observe, and my befuddlement grows exponentially. He's still talking at me, and his tone is now decidedly unfriendly. I shrug, and throw up both my hands in a gesture meaning, "Sorry, pal, I don't get you." This seems to trip his circuit. He is now yelling loudly, and suddenly pushes his chair back, grabs up his backpack and storms out. Whoaaa!!! Wotdidido?!

The owner of the taverna grins across at me, tapping his head with an index finger, then describing a clockwise circular motion in the air next to his ear, in the universal gesture for crazies. "Trelos!," he says, laughing. "Drugs, maybe!", he adds as an afterthought. Ahhh, I get it! I had been fraternizing with a junkie, and the outstretched hand was not a request to read his fortune or to check for signs of insanity; he was just trying to get me to finance his next fix!

Oh well okay, I thought to myself, that's Fruitcake of the Day over and done with. Next one that tries it, I'm just going to have to say "No, NOT today!!! It's my day OFF!" Come on, Gatos! Let's get outta here!

With a View like this, who needs a Room?!!

© Priya Tuli

With all due apologies to E.M. Forster, this is a sunset over the famous caldera at Fira, Santorini. Understandably, it elevates caldera-view rooms straight up to the budgetary realms of Fortune-500 types, rather than mere penurious mortals like us. So I’ll just take the view, thank you.

“But where’s the caldera?”, asks every first-timer to Fira. Well, this IS the caldera, you say. (By now you're the expert, because this is your second visit!) All those islands? They actually form a broken rim, see it? And the Aegean rushed in there…so really, the sea is inside and outside and all around the caldera. The incline of the slope is steeper on the inner side, see? And gentler on the outer side. And ohh shhh, watch the sunset!

To witness a Fira sunset is truly spectacularly splendiferous, and has been known to reduce goobly types to tears. My first time was like that. (Please pass the kleenex). Now, although I’m far more seasoned, I still carry extra kleenex just-in-case.

My first sunset here was in November 2001. It was off-season, and Fira was practically empty, with just a sparse handful of tourists knocking around, three of whom I'd already met the previous day. (Me?! I'm no tourist, I belong here! Or at any rate, that's how it feels!)

I walked up to the deserted terrace of a café, which was shut. Almost everything was shut…off-season. An old man sat just at the entrance. We greeted each other with a smile and a 'kalispera', as I continued past him to the railing overlooking the caldera. Sunset was still about an hour away...and I had the ent

The Big Yawnnn...

Kalia has an odd sense of humour and unfortunately, not much time for books...he is therefore neither an EduCat nor a LiteraryCat...

All this can be excused, however, as his greatest feat of derring-do remains his claim to lasting fame...at the age of 8 weeks, when I found him on the street, he was staring down a terrier 10 times his size, no exaggeration. A tiny 8-week-old black-and-white scrap of a kitten with his fur bristling, bushy tail held upright with the tip curling into a question mark, he wasn't to know that the terrier was tentatively wagging its tail and probably only wanted to sniff and check him out. For sure, Kalia wasn't having any of that.

Of course, I got out of the car as quietly as possible so as not to scare him onto the middle of the road and oncoming traffic, and silently snuck up on him from behind, swooping down and grabbing him with both hands like a falcon. He was not amused, nor reassured, and scratched me up good and proper in the car. His fur didn't stop standing on end for the entire ride home, and he didn't really settle till a good hour after being fed.

Yes, he was scared out of his wits, and that's probably what has made him one of the quietest, most placid, even soporific felines I have ever known. Nothing fazes him any longer; what could possibly be more traumatic than that early encounter with a huge furry canine? I suspect, though, that it might be a DNA-induced congenital laziness, from the sleepy slow-motion way in which he moves...when he moves.

There is one thing that does hit the spot for him, though, and that is mealtimes. Twice a day, Kalia vroomvrooms into Schumacher mode and zips around the house, describing a defined, never-changing clockwise circuit from the living room through the dining room to the kitchen door and back. He ducks past the coffee table from the left, then dashes past the dining table, stops briefly at the kitchen door, meows piteously and dashes back, from the right, mind you, to the starting point. Then off again past the coffee table...and so on.

This whole routine is repeated upto 20 times, twice a day. Without fail. The floor tiles are finally beginning to show signs of wear, and it's not like he won't be fed...but still, he seems to think a reminder is required. Twice a day. Every day. Or maybe this is part of his cleverly devised health regimen. Just enough of a workout to put an edge on the appetite. That's all the excercise he wants. And since he has a short, stocky sumo-wrestler type build and hardly any neck, his belly hangs real low, just inches off the floor. And lately even lower. Hrmm. Maybe I need to extend feeding time by a few minutes, so he gets an extra 5 laps of the Indy circuit each feed-time? Now, there's a thought...

Take a toothbrush, for instance...

I remember a time when a toothbrush came in one size, one style and 4 colours: red, blue, green and yellow. And everyone wanted the yellow.

Today, your toothbrush is an extension of your personality. It tells visitors to your bathroom a whole lot about you, your last relationship, your worst nightmare, your borderline schizoid tendencies and your favourite 3 am snack. It also defines your status, and hints at the health of your bank balance. Does yours have a flourescent stripe down the side and its own personal jet? Well then, you're not hip enough to make the grade, sorry.

Today's toothbrushes separate the men from the women from the girls from the boys from the wimps. Besides, they not only brush your teeth, they also feed the kids/pets, pay your bills and call the dentist for you. Or they should, considering how savvy they look.

They come in a plethora of ergonomic and aerodynamically superior shapes, from supersleek curves...two and three per handle...or a wiggle or two or five at the top, just before the bristles. There are striped sporty-looking bi-coloured ones, there’s contrast stripes and sparkles, bi-coloured bristles, tricky ones with longer bristles at the top to reach behind teeth, longer bristles at the back to reach behind ears…you name it, somebody thought of it. I'd really like to meet the people that design them. They must have chronically warped minds.

Meanwhile, I've just been toothbrush shopping. I have a whole new wardrobe of them; a 3-colour-bristle one for teeth, gums and plaque (evidently, each colour knows what its job spec. is), blue with a green stripe, green with a blue stripe and orange dots...hey, three new toothbrushes is a real splurge for me...I usually wait till all the bristles fall out before even considering buying a new one. But hell, I'm feeling extravagant. Next week, I go shopping for dental floss.