Free A Life Beyond Boundaries by Benedict Anderson Page B

me about tjabe rawit , the tiny green or red peppers that set fire to one’s tongue. They were impressed that I struggled to be brave and not spit the peppers out. Then the torrential rain started again. Ong said it was impossible to get to my lodgings, and there was no telephone handy, so we had better sleep with his friends. They handed me a small towel and a spare sarong , and showed me how to use the Indonesian-style bathroom. I took to the sarong like a duck to water, and in spite of swarms of mosquitoes, I slept like a log.
    The next morning I returned ‘home’ and apologized effusively to my landlady for staying out on my second night in Indonesia and not informing her. But she brushed the apologies aside. The monsoon was like that, she said. You could get stuck anywhere, and boys will be boys. This was my first experience of ‘culture shock’. I felt that I had been rude by my European standards, but she did not at all feel the same way. Later I came to realize the huge difference between how unmarried men and women were treated in Indonesian society: the young men were free to do what they wanted, but the young women were watched, guarded and kept at home as much as possible.
    The next shock was quite different, and wholly pleasant. Opposite the house there was a triangular, unused open space covered with weeds, grasses and mud. In theafternoons, a gang of little kampong boys, aged between eight and twelve, would gather there to play soccer. They would begin by tossing a coin, and the losing side would solemnly take off their shorts (they wore no underwear). That was how they told one side from another. Of course they had no goalposts. But they brought along four little brothers and sisters, still at the crawling rather than the running stage, and used them carefully as moving goalposts.
    This was my introduction to two aspects of the lives of ordinary Indonesian children. The first was easy public nudity for boys until they reached puberty – something unimaginable in Ireland or the US. The second was the intimacy between siblings. From a very early age Indonesian children have to help the younger ones, and to respect and obey their elder brothers and sisters. My landlady explained the custom by saying: if you are older you have to give in to the young ones, give them what they want, love them and protect them; if you are younger you have to do what your older sisters or brothers tell you. This seemed contradictory, but it really worked. While in Indonesia I rarely saw the children in a family fighting with each other, exactly the opposite of my own experience. Rory and I fought constantly – to our mother’s annoyance – till we went off to Eton.
    A third shock was my first contact with madness. I was walking past a crowded market one day when I noticed a strange figure surrounded by a swarm of giggling and screaming little boys. It was a completely naked young woman, unwashed, with very long tangled hair reachingto her behind. Mostly, the market people paid her no attention, or, if in a good mood, gave her little gifts of food. When I asked a vendor who the woman was, she said, ‘Poor thing! Some man broke her heart and she went mad. Her parents try to clothe her, but she always tears off any clothing.’ Later, I would come across mad men, also naked and dirty, and people would say the same kind of thing. I began to reflect that maybe these poor creatures, who did no one any harm, were better off than mad people in Europe and America, who, in those days, were shut away for years in isolated asylums. Here they could go where they pleased, and society casually fed them.
    My immediate difficulty was language. I quickly learned that the kind of formal Indonesian I had studied at Cornell was textbook stuff that people only used in formal situations. My new friends laughed at the way I tried to talk, and children didn’t understand a word I said. After about three months, I