Letter from Indonesia: rhino rides the rails!

Jakarta, Kamis (Thursday)

I had no idea what the English term was for the funny-looking thing on the roof of a train that touched the high-voltage cables and transferred the electricity to the train’s motor.

I had to ask a friend (you probably think I wanted to stimulate some intellectual curiosity in the poor soul, who lived in an overdeveloped country, the kind of place where one loses curiosity about pretty much everything except mortgage rates and decaf soy latte frapuccinos, but really I was just too lazy to look it up myself), who looked it up for me: “pantograph”.

It’s not the sort of word that disappoints me, don’t get me wrong, but I expected something less like a Maths class and more electrical, even effervescent, but I suppose disappointment is the travelling companion of enlightenment.

“Pantograph” did bring to mind “panopticon”, the circular, all-seeing theoretical institutional building, often conceived as the model prison, that was proposed by Jeremy Bentham and used by Michel Foucault as a “metaphor for modern ‘disciplinary’ societies and their pervasive inclination to observe and normalise” (I was finally inspired to look up Wikipedia).

“Pantomime” was the next carriage in this particular train of thought, which I welcomed, because “panopticon” alone can be a little too earnest. I love a rollicking pantomime with funny-looking characters over-dressing and cross-dressing and prancing their way through outlandish plots to farcical ends, bringing out plenty of theatrically appropriate cheers, guffaws, hisses and boos from the audience.

But, for good or ill, it’s the Indonesian term that really wins my heart: kedang badak, which literally means “rhinoceros extension”. Isn’t that tremendous?

Now, in my imagination I see a handsome West Javanese rhino riding the rails on the roof of the train along with all the other poor souls who can’t fit inside the limited number of services provided by PT KAI Commuter Jabodetabek during peak hours: together, the rhino and the indebted poor up on the roof dodge and swerve around the dangling concrete balls (which remind me of the symbol for pawnbrokers: “three spheres suspended from a bar… attributed to the Medici family of Florence, Italy, [referring] to the Italian province of Lombardy, where pawn shop banking originated under the name of Lombard banking.” (Wikipedia again)), which were installed to eradicate the symptom not the cause, while every now and then the rhino rips the balls to bits with his mighty horn to the cheers of the other roof riders and the boos of the officials of PT KAI CJ and other members of the disciplinary State over-dressed and cross-dressing in their farcical plots that pass for governance.

According to their website, the vision of PT KAI CJ is to “be the best provider of railway services which meet the expectations of stakeholders”. It seems they are failing to meet the expectations of those “stakeholders” who can’t squeeze into the carriages no matter how skinny they are and how much they hold their breath.

I recommend that PT KAI-J hire a consultant, similar to our imaginary rhino, who not only transmits power but has the balls to do something with it for the benefit of the “stakeholders”, formerly known as “citizens”, of the (delusory) (disciplinary) State.

Salam