incomes making monthly payments they can ill afford for something that will no longer be at all keren by the time the debt is paid off.
The funny thing is, if you ask almost any Indonesian about gengsi they will insist that it’s a bad thing. They’ll make a clear distinction between gengsi and the much more positive idea of harga diri—“self-worth”, or “dignity”. And someone who is obviously a slave to gengsi beyond their means will probably be mocked as sok kaya—“pretend rich”. But almost everyone feels its insidious pull, because if you don’t happen to have the latest phone and motorbike there’s always the terrible prospect of being seen as kampungan—literally “villagey”, but meaning something close to “hick” in the American sense or “bumpkin” in Britain, also known as ndeso in Javanese. And whether they’ll admit it or not, most people would much rather risk being judged as sok kaya than kampungan!
ALAY: The Way Too Much Kids
Of all the myriad trends that Indonesia’s seething cities have thrown up in recent years, none has matched the impact of the wacky, cartoonish, and downright ridiculous cultural phenomenon known as Alay. No one really knows where the term originated. Some claim it’s an abbreviation of anak layangan (“kite kid”) after the traditional young kite-flyers of working class neighborhoods, but personally I think it’s more likely to be short for anak lebay, which means something like “way too much, kid”!
So what exactly is an Alayer, and why do those Indonesians who consider themselves sophisticated look down on them? The closest English-language equivalents I’ve ever been able to come up with are “try-hard” and “wannabe”. Imagine some wannabe Paris Hilton and her wannabe gangster-rapper boyfriend from Hicksville, Nowhere—that would be kind of Alay. But Alay culture also has some very specific features, inextricably linked to social media.
Have you ever posed for a selfie in front of a famous tourist attraction, trying to get the cutest 45-degree angle possible while at the same time pouting provocatively and putting a finger to your lips? And have you then used your phone’s built-in image editing tech to add pink stars plus your name in sparkly lettering before posting the thing on Instagram? And have you ever written a text message L1k3 7h15? If the answer’s yes, then you’re totally Alay, and any true Indonesian hipster worth his skinny jeans hates you!
The term Alay first went mainstream sometime around 2011, and it was mainly used in a pejorative sense. Alayers were roundly mocked as being not only wildly narcissistic and entirely lacking in taste, but also probably pretty kampungan, which gave a nasty edge of class snobbery to the whole thing. There were even serious campaigns to immediately unfollow or unfriend anyone you spotted using 4L4y 5tyL3 writing on social media. Exactly what prompted this anti-Alay outburst is hard to explain, but the best theory I’ve heard is that it was a moment of embarrassed reflection on the part of Indonesia’s first generation of digital natives—there was some kind of collective realization that for the past social media-dominated decade they’d all been behaving, well, kind of Alay, and that it was now time to grow up.
But Alay just won’t die. These days there are those who embrace the term—proud Alayers, no less. And even the digital hipsters aren’t beyond posting the occasional Alay selfie, usually with an #Alay hashtag—just to show that they’re being ironic, of course…
SHOW SOME RESPECT!
If the debt-inducing draw of gengsi is often a negative factor, a much more positive Indonesian universal is the value given to respect, and the idea of “softness” in interactions between people. Deep respect for your elders and superiors; avoidance of any dramatic displays of emotion, especially anger; and general politeness when talking to others: these things run deep, wherever you are in Indonesia. But if that all sounds like a recipe for stiff upper lips and starchy formality, that’s not the way it works at all. In fact, it’s precisely what underpins the easy-going social warmth of Indonesia. The emphasis is on being at ease, and making sure that others are at ease, and being polite and avoiding emotional outbursts are a big part of that.
Military order gives way to easygoing informality amongst these soldiers enjoying some downtime during a disaster relief operation in Sumatra.
The subtlety of this stuff can, naturally, make it hard for foreigners to spot it in action—and equally hard to spot transgressions. On a number of occasions I’ve been out and about with an Indonesian friend, and I’ve slowly become aware that they are angry about something. When I ask what’s up, it turns out it’s all down to some tiny deficit of politeness on the part of the waiter in a restaurant we left 20 minutes ago, or the ever-so-slightly disrespectful tone of the checkout girl in the convenience store we dropped into for phone credit—things of which I, bumbling foreigner that I am, was entirely unaware.
Inevitably, it’s also very easy for bumbling foreigners to make transgressions themselves, without ever realizing it. For example, standing with your arms folded or your hands on your hips (both poses which, unfortunately, come naturally to me) looks not just arrogant, but also downright aggressive in an Indonesian context. And getting worked up, shouting, and flapping your arms about—even if you’ve got an entirely legitimate reason to be angry—will get you absolutely nowhere.
It’s probably true to say that in modern urban Indonesia the traditional importance of respect and restraint are giving way a little. Waiters and checkout girls are getting a bit ruder, as they are in big cities the world over, and you do sometimes see couples arguing noisily in public. But it’ll be a long time before the value of respect and restraint fades away entirely.
Indonesia’s national emblem is the Garuda—an eagle-like creature from Hindu mythology. It is the embodiment of Pancasila, the national ideology. Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, the Old Javanese phrase on the scroll that the Garuda grips in its claws, is the national motto, literally meaning “different but one”, and usually translated as “unity in diversity”.
Is Indonesia a “Muslim Country”?
Whenever I spot the phrase “the world’s biggest Muslim country”—or worse yet, “the world’s biggest Islamic country”—in a news report about Indonesia I growl and reach for my imaginary copy editor’s pen. To my pedantic mind the correct description should be “the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country”, because that’s precisely what Indonesia is. “Muslim country” or “Islamic country” suggests somewhere like Iran or Pakistan where Islam is enshrined as a state ideology, and where the religion is the dominant decider of social values. But Indonesia’s just not like that.
Inside the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia’s biggest place of Muslim worship.
If you’ve ever spent time in other Muslim-majority countries—from Morocco to Bangladesh—you’ll sense a subtle difference as soon as you arrive. It’s not simply that Indonesia is markedly more liberal (although it is generally much more liberal when it comes to the position of women, and social values around boyfriend-girlfriend relationships, for example, than anywhere in the Middle East). There’s also the impression that Islam is not what sets the universal tone of daily life here. Sure, there are mosques and people in obviously “Muslim” dress—and in recent years an increasingly noisy and politically influential Islamist fringe, which some fear is beginning to change
