rantlust

Posted by papi on May 24th 2008 in Farmers Market, Travel
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On my first day in the Indonesian city of Jogjakarta, my friend, anthropologist and all round Matahari, Sheri, handed me a map of the city with illustrations showing the various points of interest. My eye was immediately drawn to a little picture of a birdcage in the bottom left corner, right next to the famous Kraton - the palace of the Javanese sultan. It said Pasar Burung which means ‘bird market’. “It’s a market”, Sheri deadpanned, “for birds.”

I’m a sucker for markets. Some of my best times have been spent in the teeming bowels of some native marketplace. Long ago, when I used to work in Delhi, I would scarcely glance at the ramparts of the Red Fort on my way to the old city bazaar, where I spent many a happy hour gorging on kebabs, lingering in motorcycle repair shops and browsing used bookstores. Bazaar over cathedral any day; twice on market day. More recently, a meal of roast pig and boiled corn from the marketplace at Otavalo will linger long in my memory. Small wonder then, that as soon as I’d dumped my bags at the Lilik, I hotfooted it across town to the Pasar Burung.

When they named this place the bird market, they were not kidding. It’s a small market, but is packed wall to wall with birds and birdcages of a bewildering variety. Can you smell it yet? I was intrigued - my immediate thought was that owning birds must be huge in Java. I then noticed that almost every house and shop had a caged bird or two hung from the rafters over the porch. The market also has other small animals - cats, dogs, rabbits, ornamental fish and so on, but birds rule the roost, so to speak. After a few hours browsing through the market in the sweltering heat, I was ready for a drink and was drawn to the “Water Castle Cafe”, named after the nearby Tamansari or “Water Castle” where the sultan used to house his harem.

The cafe is run by Kompi, a painter and photographer of no mean talent, who also happened to be quite knowledgeable about Indian and Indonesian culture and mythology. India casts a long cultural shadow in these parts, and many of the traditions of Indonesia have their origins in India, but with indigenous modifications and interpretations - but that’s a whole different post. I asked Kompi about the birds, and he explained it thus.

In Java, a boy becomes a man when he obtains the following - a house, a horse, a kris (traditional sword), a wife, and birds. I could understand the first four. They are purely material needs. A wife for procreation, a house for shelter, a horse for transportation, and a kris for protecting them all. But why birds? Kompi’s answer was that the birds feed the spirit. They embody music and art, our hunger for the mystic and spiritual, our desire to transcend mere flesh. Caged as they are, their song reminds us of our yearning to be free.

When I left the cafe, the bird market glowed in an altogether different light.