Allah Made Us Different

By Staff Reporter - *Celebrating with spirit and spirituality* - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta, Indonesia
Saturday, December 19, 2009

Jakarta residents, along with visitors from around the country, spent Thursday and Friday at the Taman Mini Indonesia Indah park, East Jakarta, celebrating the Suro (Islamic and Javanese New Year) national holiday, which fell on Friday.

The park, usually deserted at night, was imbued with a festive and mystical aura, as visitors flocked for the celebration and various rituals were conducted. Chanting, singing and fragrant scents filled the air in several spots where rituals were held.

Food stalls and vendors selling various wares from watches to wayang (shadow puppets) lined the walkways and some visitors even indulged in night-time picnics with friends and families.

"This celebration is cultural as well as religious," Ade F. Meyliala, the park's operational director, said.

He said the park observed the celebration annually. However, this year's event was unique.
"This year we had an hour-long parade that began in the afternoon," he explained.

The parade kicked off at the park's Sasono Agung stage, proceeded 4 kilometers to the Archipel area, before finishing back at the stage where it was followed by a feast.

On display in the parade were cultural heritage items such as a spear from the ancient Majapahit kingdom era, usually housed inside the park's heritage museum, lavishly decorated tumpeng (cone-shaped rice dishes), which were then shared, and kerbau bule (light-skinned buffalo).

Following the parade and the feast, which included the performance of a traditional dance from Kalimantan, several events were held in different parts of the park.

In the Sasana Adiroso Angeran Sambernyawa room, people dressed in different costumes gathered to discuss the spiritual aspects of nationalism and nation-building until dawn.
The crowd included a group of men in green robes and women in white, a small group of red-and white clad men and women, ornately jeweled women in traditional kebaya dresses, and long haired men dressed in black.

Some of them participated in the parade, and after the feast held an inter-faith discussion on how spiritualism could help shape the country's fate.

The main speakers included those adhering to Islamic, Buddhist and kepercayaan faiths. The latter is a wide category encompassing religious beliefs not covered by the six state-endorsed faiths of Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

The discussion was lively, with spiritual "experts" and "mystics" voicing their opinions on subjects such as corruption, violence and tolerance.

Raden Roro Indra A. Sriemandhi, a Sufi leader, emphasized the common thread of "love" in all religions and advised the audience to maintain attitudes of love and compassion.

"I think this is very interesting ... After all, this nation is comprised of many religious and ethnic groups, but it is all because of Allah, who made us different. In the end I think we are all the same in our journey to Allah," a member of an Islamic group from Bekasi said.

Present throughout the discussion were the sounds of high-pitched singing accompanying the wayang show, as well as the narrating voice of the puppet master. The show that night told the story of Luwaring Punagi Drupadi, with famed puppet master Ki Manteb Soedharsono telling the story with dramatic movements in which he made the puppets fight, leap and somersault.

"I come here every year to see the wayang show," said Kasiman, an audience member who avidly watched the show, holding intermittent discussions with his friends next to him.
"This dalang *puppet master* can tell any story," Kasiman's friend said, praising the master's skills.

A short walk away from the building where the puppet theater was held, a cleansing ritual called ruwatan was being conducted in the park's Museum Indonesia building.

Inside a square space marked by a wide black ribbon fastened to decorated pillars, a group of adults and young people all clad in white sat together to undergo the cleansing ritual, said to keep bad luck and bad spirits away.

The celebration also included musical performances from Debu, a multi-ethnic group of American musicians, as well as local musicians Ridho Rhoma and Rhoma Irama.

"Taman Mini Indonesia Indah" means "Beautiful Indonesia Miniature Park"

[Picture: Nitra, Taman Mini's Mascot. Photo from Wiki.]