Of Bandung and Bentong

I haven't been to Bandung for a while and kind of miss the place. I'm happy to know today that the customer has requested me to be there next week. Looks like I will get to luxuriate on the three-hour train journey again and enjoy the great Parahyangan (Abode of the Gods) landscape along the way.

Bandung reminds me of my hometown Bentong sometimes. The journey to Bandung by car from Jakarta brings back memories of what the car-ride from KL to Bentong was like before the KL-Karak highway was built. Passing through Puncak on the way to Bandung is a bit like arriving at the foot of Genting Highlands on the way to Bentong: the weather is cool, the terrain mountainous and the roads winding.

Bandung with its many old Dutch buildings reminds me of the Bentong I knew when I was a child--the colonial houses along Jalan Bukit, the D.O.'s residence near Padang Kelab and the evergreen Padang Tras where I spent many happy mornings playing soccer with my friends.

Nowadays it looks like I go to Bandung more often than Bentong. My childhood home is still there, uninhabited. My old books--books that had enthralled me as a child--lie on a shelf in my bedroom, collecting dust and my old paintings hang silently on the wall staring into emptiness.

It saddens me sometimes to think how much Bentong has changed these days. The rubber estate in front of my house has been bulldozed away for housing development; my alma mater has been repainted in some gory colours; the traffic has become horrendous.

According to my Indonesian friends, Bandung too has changed a lot over the past decade. The weather used to be very cool and people had to wear thick jackets at night. But now on weekends, you'll see the town jam-packed with carloads of city-folks from Jakarta, crowding the restaurants, polluting the hotsprings and littering the shopping malls. Bandung is the nearest escape for them. It looks a bit like my hometown during Chinese New Year.

Sometimes, on that slow langorous train ride to Bandung, I spot kids playing soccer on an open patch of grass; and I'd always see a speedy young kid, chasing the ball barefoot down the flanks, imagining himself to be Rivelino; and then for a brief moment I would think that I had caught a glimpse of paradise.