My Grey World

Hmm.. Sebenernya dah lumayan lama pengen bikin post yang ini.. Tapi berhubung baru aja gw transfer foto2nya, akhirnya baru sekarang gw bisa bikin.. hehe…
Okay, what i wanna talk is about the paintings that our little friends made. And why’s that important? Hehe. Take a look…
(note : photos taken in some elementary school owned by my church. Please forgive me for any bad photographs. I only used the VGA camera in my handphone.. Relax!)

Take a look at this stuff :

What a standard painting, eh? Two mountain peaks with the sun peeping between them and a road in the middle of the picture, along with the plants, and a river in here.
I bet you have painted a painting like this when you’re in elementary school.
(well, maybe except for the readers from abroad. Hello Haggen Kennedy, if you read this stuff.. =D)
What I think as the problem is that, have this little child (his name is Kelvin, if you look closely @ the piccha) really ever seen a scene like this? I mean, he lives in Jakarta! And what we see in Jakarta every sunrise is just.. Traffic jam… D A M N! Okay, maybe not exactly traffic jam, but the beginning of the traffic jam. Okay, to state it concisely, there’s no way you can see a scene like this in Jakarta!

Another stuff :

Nice colors, eh? One time, I got a calendar from my school. It contained pictures that were painted by children all over the world. And the pictures from Indonesian children always have the colors like this. With the gradation or whatsoever. Nice to be seen, actually, but not real.
And the scene in this picture ain’t real either.
Another two mountain peaks with the sun peeping between them. And see the people? It just seems so…. country. All the scene seems so country, actually. And you’re living in Jakarta? What the hell happened? Why did the teacher ask you to draw such a country scene? And you’re living in Jakarta, little boy. J-a-k-a-r-t-a!

And how about this stuff here :

Hmm.. Sorry for the blur there. Anyway, can you catch what’s happening in the picture? Can you see an elementary school student buying fruits, and in the right side of the picture there is a long long road leading to a mountain peak? (Country road.. Take me home.. To the place.. I belo-o-o-o-o-ong… **Gosh I luv yah John Denver…**)
D~uh? Where do you think you live at, eh? Puncak? (say it in english accent : Poon-chuck?)
Or maybe you live in some village and you have to walk for several hours to get into your school. Maybe you walk along that long road to the mountain? Oh wait. Your school ain’t on a mountain. Oh, or maybe you’re living behind the mountain? Gee. Such a long way to go to school, eh?
I’m gonna say it again. There’s no way you’re gonna see a scene like this in Jakarta. And especially that long road leading to a mountain. Gee. For goodness’ sake.

Why did these little children make pictures like those? I don’t get it. Why weren’t they taught to “draw what you see”? I mean, shouldn’t the pictures reflect the truth, the reality of their life?
I’m afraid that this will teach them not to perceive the true reality of the place they’re living. (in this case, Jakarta)
Do you get what I mean?
But anyway, take a look at these stuffs :

See the picture on the left? Isn’t that sooo Jakarta? With the tall buildings.. Well, except for the empty street. Oh, maybe this is a scene from the Lebaran/Idul Fitri (Eid-al Fitr, in English, I suppose?) At that time the people of Jakarta will “mudik” or in other words, come back to their place of origin (in Java, Sumatera, Kalimantan, whatever lah). That holiday always proves that the people of Jakarta consist of commuters. And I, who was born and raised in Jakarta (so how can I “mudik”??) will enjoy the emptiness of Jakarta! Jakarta without traffic jam! Surely a paradise… heheheheheehhe. Actually I don’t get what this little child meant by the green-yellow-orange part. But who cares lah…
And the picture on the right… I love this one! The flood in Jakarta, eh? The BIG flood. You see the water up high, so high until it reaches the roof? D~uh. That’s the truth! That’s what happened in Jakarta when the big flood came. Anyway, the people in that picture seem to be too big, but well.. I will apologize that for she (the name is Jesslyn, isn’t it?) has portrayed the reality.
I will appreciate these close-to-reality pictures more rather than praising those pretty-but-unreal pictures.
Will you guys, too?
These two close-to-reality pictures are the closest-to-reality pictures I got there. You see, they put the pictures on show in front of the class. And what I saw is mostly the two mountain peaks with the sun peeping in them. Along with the road leading to them, of course. Along with the flowers and any other plants beside the road. D~uh????

I don’t have any strong arguments for this, but I really want the little children to draw what they see. Draw the reality. Not that stupid two mountain peaks with the sun peeping between them! Gee. Any mountains in Jakarta? Oh, i forgot that there are. There are steel mountains here in Jakarta. Hahahahahahaha.
Gee, if I had been a teacher, I would surely have asked them to draw what they see everyday. The traffic jam. The tall buildings. The people in the bajaj/becak/ojek/busway. The backstabbing scenes.. (oh hey, what the hell happened with the topic??)
Oh, maybe drawing a traffic jam will be much more difficult than drawing those two stupid mountain peaks with the sun peeping between them. (how many times have I stated that stupid definition?? D~uh..)

But anyway, I really regret this. I regret that the pictures the children made don’t reveal the true reflections of their life.
Jakarta has been harsh, and now Jakarta has been fake. Fully loaded with artificial and fake things. Along with artificial and fake people.
Oh my, my. Poor, poor Jakarta.