Pleasant things in Life
QR 857 CGK to DOH
After a farewell lunch at the office of my
friend HP in Bogor, we took the precaution to leave early for the airport. It
is not the distance to the airport, which is worrisome, but the
unpredictability of the traffic jams which are notorious.
The traffic flowed smoothly; HP reminded us
that because of recent floods in Jakarta, many of the commuters were using
other methods than driving their cars to work or leisure.
Go to Jakarta only when it is absolutely
necessary, he warned.
We arrived at the Terminal 2 and within
minutes I was taken to the Premium Lounge and check in. A counter with agents
awaited and then a lone immigration officer guarded the entrance to the lounge
where she could check your passport and boarding pass.
She had a distinct Melanesian look, which
attested to the diversity of this empire of the east, as Norman Lewis had
called Indonesia.
Which part of Indonesia are you from? I
politely enquired
Papua
I thought so, and then we talked about the
Melanesian geography.
You have relatives in New Guinea, down to
Solomon Islands and Fiji Islands, all the way down to New Caledonia.
She smiled, at the recognition of her
unique identity within the second most linguistically diverse country, only
second to Papua-New Guinea with its thousands of languages.
(PREMIER LOUNGE AT CGK MUCH LIKE A DOMESTIC LOUNGE IN THE USA BUT WITH BETTER FOOD AND SERVICE)
The lunch was sitting heavy, so the food
offerings at the Premiere Lounge were of little interest. Felt very grateful to
be able to travel with this sort of comfort, which eases the wariness of long
distance travel
At the departure gate, majority of the
passengers waiting were dressed theatrically for their pilgrimage to Mecca. For
reasons unknown to me, they all seem to wear some sort of uniform, batik
shirts, baggy pants and slippers for men, women covering themselves up except
their faces, with some adornment on their head cover as an exception to the
modesty this dress brings.
I will have a safe flight, I said to
myself, noting the power of the collective prayers that will metaphorically
lift this aircraft through the skies.
The first surprise was waiting when I
entered the aircraft
I was organizing my overhead storage space,
when a Flight Attendant said; there are just two of you in this cabin today
It gives you a sensation of a flying
castle, appropriate analogy for this aircraft owned by the Emir of Qatar!
Now joined by another Flight attendant they
introduced themselves, T was from Thailand and J was from Indonesia.
What a coincidence, I thought to myself, to
my query which part of Indonesia she was from and was pleasantly surprised to
hear that she had grown up in Pontianak and had moved to Jakarta.
Ha, my good friends who were at the
farewell lunch in Bogor, who were from Pontianak and are Chinese and speak Teo
Chew
I am also Chinese and I speak Teo Chew as
well as Ka, which I remember being a lingua franca variety of Chinese spoken to
communicate between the merchants and the populace of Malay and Dayak people.
At this point, my fellow passenger arrived
and immediately we began to joke with the flight attendants, why don't you take
rest and we will serve you.
I was seated in 1 A and he was at 1K on the
other side and soon we began talking in which I was able to get an idea of life
of this Chinese Indonesian gentleman who looked younger than his stated age. In
fact he was the same age as my good friend HP of Bogor.
By listening carefully, and piecing
together the information I had before about the life of the Chinese in
Indonesia, his story was indeed a nice addition about this cultural group in
this multitudinous country.
One gets a feeling just before the flight
whether or not the ensuing hours would be a pleasant one, mainly calming your
mind and not creating any conflicts. This was to be one of those flights.
But the little delights of life, given as
surprise gifts were waiting around the corner.
Because of the sparse passenger load in
this cabin, two of the four attendants assigned had gone to help their
colleagues (usually the senior attendants like to help more often, J was to say
later) and my traveling companion from Jakarta, Mr S, had gone in search of
some cognac as he felt that would calm his nerves on this long flight. I was
digesting his story when J appeared and for the next hour and half, what
followed was one of the most interesting conversations I have ever had during
my flying career as a passenger.
Normally I would have prepared myself
psychologically for the long flight, calming myself down and getting the
reading and writing material within reach.
Somehow a levelheaded conversation, away
from the quotidian worries of travel and lifestyle, began with J
There were things about J, which was very
conducive to the good conversation to follow
Her mannerism was beyond the
professionalism we expect of the flight attendants from the Middle Eastern
giants of aviation.
She spoke English well, without betraying
any deep cultural origins of her schooling in Jakarta.
A conversation such as this also teaches
you about the Tibetan Buddhist concept of “removing the obscurations” of the true
nature of the mind. Interestingly enough, this corresponds well to the
reduction of Kleishas, the structural defects of the mind in the Yogic
Philosophy.
A conversation such as this should take you
back to the innocence of childhood rather than the capriciousness of our
collected experiences or the planned desires, thus increasing the defects in
our mind.
What was most important about the
conversation that one must use such an occasion to cultivate wholesome
qualities while discovering inherent purity of ones mind.
One cannot convert this purity or the
sensations created by chemicals secreted by the brain into desires or
attachment, both of which can increase the Kleishas or the structural defects
in your mind and put impediment on your progress as a person.
I learned this as a child when people
visiting our home would leave and I would feel that my entire life was at an
end, because the desire to continue the pleasant time of being with my friends
and family. If that desire becomes intense or become a longing or an attachment,
then one looses purity of thought and the capacity of creation in the mind of
ideas.
I like to see my good friend HP in Bogor,
but never plan or long for my next meeting, but it happens, without much
planning. It is not the desire that leads to that, but many other inherent
qualities we share that make us come together.
It would be nice to see J again, but
planning for it is not beneficial, apart from the pleasure of planning but if
you do run into friends again and again, as American Indians would say, it was
meant to happen. As the poet Thiago de Mello said:
Artigo XII
Decreta-se que nada será obligado
nem
proibido,
tudo será permitido,
inclusive brincar com os
rinocerontes
e caminhar pelas tardes
com uma imensa
begônia na lapela.
Nothing is
obligatory nor Prohibited, everything should be possible, including playing
with the Rhinoceros and walking each afternoon with an immense begonia in your
lapel (my translation)
Parágrafo único: Só uma
coisa fica proibida: amar sem amor.
There is only one
thing that is prohibited: To love without Love
While searching for the above
poem, I was attracted by the following that has something to do with the conversation
among friends that I am writing above
Fica decretado que
o homem
não precisará nunca mais
duvidar do homem.
Que o
homem confiará no homem
como a palmeira confia no vento,
como o
vento confia no ar,
como o ar confia no campo azul do céu.
Parágrafo único: O homem, confiará
no homem
como um menino confia em outro menino
It is decreed that
Men should never doubt another
Men (and women) should trust each other
Like the palm tree trusts the wind
The wind trusts the air, and the air trusts the clear blue
skies
Men and Women trust each other as Children trust each
other! (My translation)
On this recent visit to Bogor and talking to the
daughters of my good friend HP, I realized that, one must not think with the
brain, but the mind, and feel with the heart.
The western culture, in which I grew up, teaches us to be
logical and think with the brain. It may be efficient but so much beauty of
life is lost.
I will try to write about how thinking with the brain
narrows your vision of the world, and using your mind to impress the brain
would open up multitudes of new thoughts and feelings and experiences to enter
your life.
My UmonHon Indian teacher, Pierre Merrick said to me:
Be happy with what you have, do not be unhappy with what
you do not have!
I would like to thank my two recent friends, from Pontianak and Manila, for the inspiration to write this piece.
