My last international posting was at Jakarta and I would count as one of my best memorable ones.
The office where I worked was in Southern part of Jakarta –
a relatively posher part of Jakarta IMHO.
Though like I have said repeatedly, Jakarta and Indonesia always felt
like they were at least 2-3 decades of India in terms of infrastructure and if
Indonesians were to ever visit India they’d struggle to live here.
Anyways I was lucky this was so, because it helped me get a
place in one of the best neighbourhoods of Jakarta – KEMANG.
When we drove in from the airport the night we arrived we
were obviously keenly observing the route and admiring the views. It didn’t look any different from other SE
Asian cities we had lived in before, and definitely far better than what we got
in India.
But as we came closer to where we stayed (& the ride was
about nearly 2 hours) the atmosphere changed like literally. It felt extremely touristy and festive like
there was a feeling of celebration in the air minus the loud party crowd. It simply uplifted us.
We moved from the initial quarters – a newly built building
with cramped quarters that we were provided to another older yet larger one,
and the new one was near the Dharmawangsa adjacent to the kemang village.
Most people in the office stayed of very far. It is popularly shared that Jakarta’s daytime
population doubles during working daytime hours and reduces at night time – so
the suburbs are where people stay at and come down for the week (some had
makeshift small apartments like where I stayed only for weekdays or stayed at
their relatives place).
Only about three employees stayed within the city and the
rest would commute at least for an hour to their residences. And I was one of
those who lived within the city limits.
So whenever any of the employees would travel with me or
sometimes we would go to eat at Kemang, they would thoroughly feel uplifted and
decide to spend some more time shopping or looking around or just hanging
around.
Kemang is hard to describe – but it was a neighbourhood
which was geared for the international expatriate community as well as a sort
of commune to help businesses that were supporting local arts and crafts etc.
But it also had one of the more premium shopping malls – the Lippo shopping
malls that we loved to hang around with (though it barely had much to offer
us). There also was a small supermarket
called KemChiks for expatriates.
It was the roads around Kemang which were fun to visit and I
can’t remember any of the names, but they were notoriously chock-a-block with
traffic all through the day. No one
however seemed to mind because, like I said, you just felt better once you
visited Kemang.
There were a lot of great places to hang around. One place I discovered much later was the
Aksara book store – a fabulously well designed place, nothing on the scale
of Kinokuniya but smaller yet comfy, and gave you strong designer vibes. They had a small café and a studio for arts
workshops and trainings, they also had a small screening room for film
clubs. You couldn’t miss this strong
arty vibe when you visited it – yes it was an art gallery masquerading as a
book store. (Sadly I heard that the store shut down in Dec 2020, but is now an art gallery still worth a visit)
But the part of Kemang I loved was Dharmawangsa – which was
mostly residential but one of the greenest spaces in Jakarta and well laid wide
avenues – extremely unlikely to get a traffic jam as a result. There were a lot of powerful people staying
here, including one of the local branches of a political party (& that used
to spook us whenever we saw a crowd waiting outside).
Dharmawangsa had a fabulous luxury property called…yes, but
of course “The Dharmawangsa” and we loved visiting it just to be there. Even though a very modern construction It was
designed as one of the older luxury hotels with really tall roofs and extremely
well designed interiors – just like any 5+ star property should be.
One of the difficulties we had in going out for eating in
Jakarta was that vegetarian fare was really hard to get, and so also in the
Dharmawangsa. Even the few vegetarian
items would have a bit of condiment like shrimp paste or powder, or beef stock
etc. and it was unavoidable. We weren’t
particularly fussy or fastidious about this but this hampered the taste
experience and we didn’t quite enjoy the food.
There were very very few items we could eat at the
Dharmawangsa, and we would stick to that.
But sitting in the restaurant by the pool was a lovely experience (we
were always the most under-dressed people in the hotel) and we soaked in the
experience.
They also had a lovely lounge and a small beautiful bar that
had some lovely promotions (one section dedicated to cocktails based on James
Bond). And while the lounge and this bar
would be crowded in the late afternoon and evening, it used to be emptied by
7.30PM and sometimes when I had to work on something late I would visit there
with my laptop or printouts and occupy one corner table undisturbed, and the
team there would be great, unintrusive just checking in if I needed a snack or
a refill, and this helped me complete a lot of good reports and presentations
there.
The thing about Kemang was it wasn’t a neighbourhood anyone
ever thought of visiting (there really wasn’t any landmark or outstanding
must-visit stores) so this helped it keep it low-profile.
But perhaps what really helped us was the fact that we spent
two beautiful years of possibly our best foreign posting in that area, and as
Indians normally do – we offered a small prayer to the locality and its
presiding deity, and today as I recall this beautiful spot of Jakarta – I offer
deep gratitude to the area and its lovely people on behalf of my family and me,
with the deepest thanks.
No comments:
Post a Comment