Ted Meinhover Tedericco

Buka Puasa

The signs of Ramadan are all around. Buying soap at the grocery store just now, I noticed how the most wretched of Dandut music, a sort of traditional pop music, was omnipresent – which raises the question of just which kind of Dandut music is the most wretched, which is far more philosophical than I care to get tonight.

I took an afternoon nap today, after a day of class, lunch with new friends, and conversations. Some were fun conversations, some enlightening, some were frightening conversations. A day of encounters and experiences can uncover another layer, another nuance that lies below the surface, obvious once it is known, once you lose another little piece of the innocence that makes the world so much easier to live in.

I rode my bike home, to my “rumah kos,” my room in the building of student housing. I was motivated by the new perspectives and understandings. Ideas bounced around in my brain, connecting, breaking apart. By the time I parked the bike, however, the bouncing brainwaves had become boiling neurons, and were threatening to bead on my forehead and drip off the end of my nose (the length of which was the teacher's favorite example today as we learned how to construct a comparative sentence: “hidung Ted paling mancung,” “Ted's nose is the biggest!”).

The only logical and practical course of action on this steaming equatorial afternoon was, obviously, to take a nap.

The act of fasting is interpreted many ways, both in terms of eating food and also in thoughts and behavior. "Awas Pornografi," watch out for porn, it corrupts the fasting heart.

I got back on my bike around 5:30, to enter the masses once again. Like I have said, religion shapes the very pace of every day here. It's incredible how quiet, sepi, it is during the day. A majority of people have been up since 3 in the morning for Sahur, a meal before the prayer that begins another day of fasting. It's hot, and they have not had any water for hours. Then, around 4:30, it is as if you can hear the storm approaching. A roar of motor bikes begins to rise from the distance, and suddenly the entire world is moving relentlessly. Buka puasa, the breaking of the fast, is a special time in the day, and everyone wants to be wherever they're going so that they can make the most of that first drink, bite, or smoke.

A tin can riding the crest of an ocean wave was I as my little used bicycle joined the masses of motorbikes on the road. I like to be in public for buka puasa, in a restaurant, with people. It's a chance for me to watch people when they are too engrossed in what they are doing to pay special attention to the strange foreigner, a luxury I don't often have.

It's amazing the feeling that I get from those people, as they break their fast, who have fasted successfully. They are eating and drinking for the first time that day, but it is not in a hurried or frenzied way. Fasting is not simply a physical act, but an act of the spirit and the heart, I am told by friends. Perhaps the temptation is to be famished, to indulge in piles of food. The patient, small spoons of rice by people I see, calm expressions on their faces, gives an aura of immense calm.

Then, of course, there are those that appear to be reluctantly fulfilling some sort of social duty in the act of fasting, who are relieved to be able to pile all sorts of sweets on their plate, to begin a night long indulgence that will be interrupted by the next morning’s Sahur…