Street (IN)Justice

It was a Thursday morning, 7am and my friend was telling me about what just happened to him on his way to my place. He said, “The old man was riding a bike in front of my car, right, and he suddenly just fell. I hit the brake just in time to save his head from my bumper.” (He’s driving a big Ford car) “So I just sort of stopped right there, not moving, apparently he fell because he hit the car in front of him, which was an ‘angkot’ (a small minibus, public transport) that stopped to get a passenger. While stopping, a motorcycle hit me from the back. Being a big tough car, nothing happen to my car but the motorcycle almost fell,” he continued. “And apparently, the old man on the bike severed his arm quite bad. Everybody started gathered around and in the midst of confusion he almost convinced people that *I* hit him from the back. The freaking angkot disappeared and I was trying to defend myself and it was getting hot when suddenly, a lady said to everyone that it was not me who hit the old man, but he jumped brake his bike too late to avoid the suddenly stopping angkot. Geez, man. That was really, really, really, close. I was *that* close to being a mush victim of street justice crap.”

And he went on about how so thick with prejudice everyone in this city is. Everyone, he said. Including him. I couldn’t deny his words. I feel that I, myself am, also being one too. Sometimes. We got to his car, preparing our mental state of the murder traffic going to Trisakti in the morning.

On our way, I looked around. Cars and motorcycles and buses and ‘things’ like assorted vendors are piling up on the street, each eager to beat everyone else and be the first in line. To what? To where? With this much persistence on the road, that I seem to witness every single day, it’s really hard to believe that there are more news and sharing about lazy workers and employees or people who just do not grasp the idea and the ethic of the professional world, than the good news about how nobly hardworking and professional eveybody is.

My friend is still going on about how insanely horrifying this country is, if things are continuing to look like this. And in the back of my head I’m thinking, that, I’ve seen this happening since when I was 12, and that, was 22 fucking years ago.

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