All posts filed under “Opinions

Menghina Diri Sendiri

Lebaran tahun ini menjadi terasa berbeda karena baru kali ini aku harus menemani beberapa saudara yang datang dari jauh untuk berkeliling kota, dan bahkan hingga sampai ke Candi Borobudur. Begitu megahnya candi ini dengan ratusan stupa, patung Buddha, dan relief di dindingnya, apalagi mengingat candi ini dibangun pada masa kejayaan Dinasti Syailendra di abad ke-8. Begitu pentingnya Candi Borobudur sebagai peninggalan para leluhur kita, sampai-sampai UNESCO pun mengangkatnya sebagai World Heritage Site.

Bangga nggak sih kita punya peninggalan kebudayaan yang sedemikian hebat?

Oke, bangga itu biasa, semua orang juga bisa bangga, padahal bukan kita yang bikin candi itu, nenek moyang kita lah yang entah bagaimana caranya memahat ribuan batu dan menyusunnya satu-persatu sehingga bisa kita bangga-banggakan sekarang sebagai salah satu tempat ibadah umat Buddha yang terbesar di dunia.

Pertanyaan berikutnya adalah: sadar nggak kalau Borobudur itu milik kita? Kalau milik kita dan kita bangga memilikinya, seharusnya kita rawat nggak?

Beberapa foto di bawah ini menceritakan bagaimana bangsa kita menghargai warisan nenek moyangnya, yang juga adalah tempat ibadah untuk saudara-saudara kita umat Buddha.

Dilarang? Ah, tak apa nak, kita lewat saja, begitu kata sang ayah.
Dilarang? Ah, tak apa nak, kita lewat saja, begitu kata sang ayah.
Cukup jelas tergambar ada tulisan “Dilarang Duduk”, tapi ratusan orang tetap saja duduk. Tidak hanya itu, mereka juga naik ke dinding stupa, dan bahkan menyuruh anak-anak mereka untuk naik supaya bisa difoto dengan gaya lebih keren.
Cukup jelas tergambar ada tulisan “Dilarang Duduk”, tapi ratusan orang tetap saja duduk. Tidak hanya itu, mereka juga naik ke dinding stupa, dan bahkan menyuruh anak-anak mereka untuk naik supaya bisa difoto dengan gaya lebih keren.
Berkali-kali pak Satpam dan beberapa petugas kebersihan meneriakkan pemberitahuan: “Pengunjung dilarang merogoh ke dalam stupa untuk memegang patung Buddha karena sedang dilakukan perawatan terhadap candi.” Dua Satpam dan sepuluh tukang sapu tetap saja kalah lawan ribuan manusia yang tak mau mendengar.
Berkali-kali pak Satpam dan beberapa petugas kebersihan meneriakkan pemberitahuan: “Pengunjung dilarang merogoh ke dalam stupa untuk memegang patung Buddha karena sedang dilakukan perawatan terhadap candi.” Dua Satpam dan sepuluh tukang sapu tetap saja kalah lawan ribuan manusia yang tak mau mendengar.
Rerumputan itu diberi pagar kawat rendah karena sudah tidak akan mempan apabila petugas taman hanya memasang tulisan “Dilarang Menginjak Rumput”. Tapi tetap saja dilanggar, dilangkahi, dan malah dipakai duduk bersantai.
Rerumputan itu diberi pagar kawat rendah karena sudah tidak akan mempan apabila petugas taman hanya memasang tulisan “Dilarang Menginjak Rumput”. Tapi tetap saja dilanggar, dilangkahi, dan malah dipakai duduk bersantai.

Coba kalau ada orang yang melanggar batas suci masjid di kampung, atau ada orang tua yang mengajari anaknya penekan ke atas altar di Gereja Kotabaru Yogyakarta, pasti akan ada orang yang protes. Sama saja di Candi Borobudur, ini tempat ibadah, bung! Sudah terlalu banyak pula berita tentang betapa ganasnya para fotografer ketika memotret upacara Waisak di Candi Borobudur. Kalau kita sedang Misa Malam Natal atau Sholat Ied, lalu ada fotografer yang seenaknya nyak-nyakan di depan kita jeprat-jepret dengan lampu kilat menyala-nyala, kira-kira ibadah kita khusyuk nggak?

Itu dari sisi fungsi Candi Borobudur sebagai tempat ibadah. Belum lagi statusnya sebagai candi yang dibangun pada abad ke-8. Saya pernah mendengar bahwa wisatawan mancanegara jika berkunjung ke Borobudur di low season (berarti minim wisatawan baik domestik maupun mancanegara), selalu menggunakan jasa guide. Kebanyakan dari mereka akan mendengarkan dengan penuh perhatian semua hal yang diceritakan guide, dan yang lebih penting kebanyakan dari mereka akan mematuhi peraturan yang diberikan oleh petugas ataupun guide. Konon, salah satunya adalah tidak boleh memegang relief karena minyak dan/atau keringat di telapak tangan kita memiliki efek korosif untuk batuan yang sudah berusia ratusan tahun. Apa yang saya lihat dari wisatawan domestik kita sangatlah berbeda. Memanjat dinding stupa adalah hal yang biasa, apalagi sekedar duduk-duduk di tepi stupa atau meraba relief, atau bahkan berusaha merogoh patung Buddha di dalam stupa. Sudah diperingatkan pun tidak akan ada efeknya.

Duh, jangankan di candinya, baru masuk ke tempat parkir mobil pun sudah tidak ada aturan yang dituruti. Parkir serampangan dan seenaknya adalah hal biasa, apalagi ketika musim liburan di mana para tukang parkir yang jumlahnya sedikit itu sampai kewalahan dan bingung mau mengarahkan mobil yang mana lebih dulu.

Luar biasa bukan, bangsa kita yang kita banggakan ini, yang ternyata menghina dirinya sendiri. Bravo!

Rasanya cukup pas kalau artikel ini dipublikasikan di tanggal 17 Agustus 2014. Oke kita sudah merdeka, dan banyak yang mempertanyakan apakah kita sudah benar-benar merdeka. Pertanyaan lain yang mungkin bisa diajukan adalah: merdeka dari siapa?

Because our greatest adversary is indeed ourselves.

Jadi, yuk kita mulai dari diri sendiri mengubah sikap. Baca semua aturan dengan teliti, dengarkan semua perkataan petugas atau guide, dan patuhi semuanya dengan disiplin.

Mulai. Dari. Diri. Sendiri.

Merdeka!

You Don’t Need Jesus, ‘Till You’re Here

I was listening to Ben Rector’s When A Heart Breaks this morning when I thought he mentioned something about Jesus. See if you can spot it…

If my ears serve me right, I’m hearing the phrase:

…and you don’t need Jesus, ’till you’re here.

Maybe it’s just another line in another sad song about love and heart breaks, but something else caught my attention. Literally, Ben Rector’s telling us that he thinks we don’t need Jesus until we experience a heartbreak.

Or do we?

I take this as a reminder that we humans tend to forget our Creator when we’re happy. We then come crawling back when something really bad — like a heartbreak — happens to us. Only then — when we realize the gravity of our situation, our state of helplessness — do we acknowledge that we need something or someone greater than us to lean on, which in the case of Christians is of course Jesus.

So, do we really need Jesus — or God, for my brothers and sisters who embrace a faith other than Christianity — only after we encounter a heart-breaking experience?

Hostile Takeover

A few decades ago, it was common for institutions of higher education to provide affordable housing options for its staff. The common practice would be for the campus to buy a huge piece of land, break it up into lots, and then offer them to its staff at a very attractive price. This was the case with UGM, where my aunt was lecturer and where I got my bachelor’s degree.

Long story short, my aunt got married to an American, and is now living on the other side of the earth from here. Thus, the plot of land that was allocated for her is no longer of any use. So, she decided to hand over the deed to me. So about a year ago I went to campus and met with some of her old friends, and they pointed out the directions for me. About a month after  that, my mom and I decided to have a look at its site. Boy, were we surprised.

The locals hadn’t heard from my aunt in ages (like, 2 or 3 decades), so they decided that the plot of land was vacant, and decided to build an off-road grass track that cuts right in the middle of it. Even the boundary markers were gone.

Now, this is also a common practice in my beloved nation: anything that hasn’t got a label on it, belongs to no one, and anybody can claim ownership of it. This is the model of thinking that has Jakarta’s rivers flooding.

How, you ask?

A lot of low-income and non-educated households dream of making it big in the metropolitan city. So they leave from villages all across Java, move in, and build makeshift houses from sheet metal and leftover wood pieces. They start littering the river with their household waste, throwing away everything from leftover food to broken refrigerators. Now, when the Vice Governor of Jakarta asks them to leave and occupy the many low-cost apartments he built for them, they refuse. They claim that it is their God-given right to live there and evicting them would be a violation of human rights.

Well, damn!

This also happened recently to UGM, albeit in a slightly different situation. UGM owns a vast area of land in the northern part of Yogyakarta. This includes the network of roads and streets crisscrossing between the hundreds of buildings. On Sunday mornings a part of this property called Lembah UGM (The Valley), around Notonegoro St., is bustling with commerce. Sort of an impromptu market where people can buy anything from cheap hair accessories to traditional food. This is great for the economy, of course, and provides an excellent place for citizens to gather in a public place to jog, bike, relax, have breakfast, do some light shopping, etc.

Now UGM wants to reorganize the place to better support the environment. For this reason, the authorities have prepared a relocation site for all 784 “tenants”. Now, I’m not really sure if “tenant” is the right terminology, but sources say that the sellers pay a fee from $0.50 up to $1.50 to fund the cleaning services afterwards. This is of course very, very cheap compared to the amount of funds UGM is prepared to spend for the relocation.

Of course, being the Indonesians we are, the tenants furiously refuse the relocation plan, reasoning that the new place costs more ($2.00), the place is smaller, and so on and so on. Bottom line is that the plan will cost them money, and they won’t leave without a fight.

They even requested legal aid. This baffles me. If anyone has any information on how exactly the deal is between UGM and these tenants, please let me know. As far as I know, however, UGM has every right to evict these tenants after the contract is over. I mean, it is a contract, isn’t it? It surely has a time limit, and it will have no legal effect once it has expired and both parties have fulfilled their obligations.

If that is how it is, then this, ladies and gentlemen, is a hostile takeover of the rightful property of Universitas Gadjah Mada.

Of course, I could be wrong, and I might have not researched the topic thoroughly enough. In that sense, any corrections are welcome.

UPDATE (24/02/2014):

Some friends have informed me that the current “tenants” pay a hefty fee of about $400 to secure their lot at the Sunday Morning market. This fee is payable to the “previous tenant”, and is valid until it is “sold” to the next tenant. I’m making a wild guess that this is where the term “grandfathered” originated.

Let’s forget for a second now that this deal is “for life” and puts UGM at a ridiculous disadvantage, and focus on the deal itself. Are there any valid legal documents proving that the deal even existed? Who signed the documents? Are UGM officials involved in this? Will the deal even be considered in the court of law?

I find it curious that I can’t find any sources online that can verify my friends’ story. If anybody has any info about this, by all means, please share it with the rest of the world.


Some other reading material:

  1. http://www.slideshare.net/IqbalLiverpudlian/konflik-dalam-pengelolaan-sunmor
  2. http://ugm.ac.id/id/berita/8719-puk.sunmor.terobos.portal.ugm.prihatin
  3. Will add more links as they come…