In the dismal corners of my study, thumbing through the
fifth edition of the Great Dictionary of the Indonesian Language—a book that
smelled of dust and forgotten secrets—I discovered something peculiar. The word
“pengemis,” meaning “beggar,” wasn’t just another entry squeezed between
thousands of others. No, it carried weight. A history. A darkness.
Its root? “Kemis.” Coming from “mis.” Thursday.
Just a day of the week, you might think. Nothing special
about Thursday—stuck between Wednesday’s halfway point and Friday’s promise of
weekend salvation. But in this case, Thursday held something more. Something
that crawled beneath the skin of history and nested there, growing like a tumor
of tradition.
I leaned closer to the brittle pages, my desk lamp casting
yellow shadows across the text. The dictionary defined “kemis” plainly enough: “to
ask” or “to beg.” But dictionaries, like small-town sheriffs, never tell you
the whole truth. They give you facts without the blood that pumps beneath them.
And there was blood here, alright. There always is when
desperation meets power.
---
The Dutch East Indies, January 25, 1855. While America was
tearing itself apart over slavery and the West was just learning to photograph
death on battlefields, the first Javanese-language newspaper took its first
breath. They called it Bromartani—a fancy name for something that came out only
on Thursdays.
But it wasn’t the newspaper that interested me. It was what
happened forty years later, in 1895, when a reporter named Raden Samingoen
Nitiprodjo started tracking the movements of Sunan Pakubuwono X, ruler of
Kasunanan Surakarta Hadiningrat. A king moving through his domain, trailing
power like aftershave.
Every Thursday afternoon, the Sunan would leave his
palace—Sasana Sewaka, they called it, as if naming things made them less
threatening—and walk to the Grand Mosque of Solo for Quran recitation.
Religious devotion, sure. But what happened along the way was the stuff
nightmares are born from.
That’s where it started. That’s where the darkness began
to feed.
---
Picture this: A king walking down the street, not alone but
surrounded by officials with titles too complicated for American tongues.
Bupati. Abdi dalem. Names that meant power. Protection. The king’s buffer
against the unwashed masses.
And those masses? They waited. Crouched low like
predators—or prey, depending on who was telling the story. They formed lines on
either side of the street, patient as cancer.
When the king passed, they didn’t just bow. They scrambled
forward to kiss his hand, to touch divinity wrapped in mortal flesh. In
return—and here’s where the story turns, where the road drops away into
something deeper—the king ordered his attendants to scatter money.
“Sinuwun,” they called this distribution. Royal charity.
Divine generosity. But Raden Samingoen, that reporter with eyes too sharp for
his own good, called it “kemisan.” Thursday-ing. The people who received these
coins? “Pengemis.” The act? “Ngemis.”
Begging was born on a Thursday afternoon, under the shadow
of a king who thought he was being kind.
---
The original beggars—and this is the part that keeps me up
at night, staring at the ceiling fan spinning useless circles in the dark—they
weren’t looking for money. Not really. They wanted “ngalap”—blessings. They
wanted to touch the hem of greatness, to feel the static electricity of power
jump from royal fingers to their calloused palms.
But money changes things. Money always does.
The Serat Karangron tells us more, in verse 18–19 of stanza
32. The king didn’t just walk. Sometimes he rode in a carriage, scattering
coins called “udhik-udhik” along the way. And when the locals heard those
carriage wheels grinding against stone roads—that distinctive sound of wealth
in motion—they emerged from their homes like creatures from a Stephen Spielberg
nightmare. Squatting by the roadside. Waving torches. Waiting with hands
upturned like empty bird nests.
Waiting for coins to fall like rain from heaven.
---
Time passed. It always does, grinding away at traditions
until they’re something different. Something twisted.
Today’s “pengemis” aren’t seeking blessings anymore. The
dictionary definition has won out over history. They beg because they need
money, or because they’ve found that desperation sells better than most honest
labor.
In Cirebon, they fold their legs under their pants, creating
phantom disabilities to encourage phantom generosity. At the intersection of
Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo and Kesambi streets, they perform their theater of
suffering for an audience trapped at red lights.
In Salatiga, they use holy verses as currency, trading
prayers for loose change. Some hide behind fictional organizations with
religious-sounding names—as if God needed a middleman to collect His due.
And in Palu, Central Sulawesi, they time their appearances
like farmers watching growing seasons. They emerge before Eid al-Fitr, when
hearts are softest and wallets are fattest. When heavy traffic means captive
audiences with nowhere to go but into their own guilt.
The rest of the year? Many work as “kijang”—porters in
community gold mines. Digging for real treasure when the fake kind isn’t
available.
---
So that’s how it happened. That’s how a king’s Thursday
charity became an industry of outstretched hands. That’s how blessing-seekers
transformed into professionals who study human sympathy like generals studying
enemy terrain.
Sometimes I think about those first beggars, lined up on
Thursday afternoons in the 1890s. About what they would think of their
descendants, scattered at traffic lights across Indonesia. Would they recognize
the evolution of their devotion? Would they understand how their search for
divine touch became a search for the divine in loose change?
Or would they turn away, ashamed, like fathers who don’t
recognize their sons?
Maybe some traditions are better left buried. Maybe
Thursday should just be Thursday again.
But I know better than that. Thursday will never be just
Thursday in Indonesia. Not as long as there are hands reaching out from
shadows, and other hands reaching back—either from guilt or genuine compassion.
After all, every tradition is just another ghost story we
tell ourselves. And ghosts, I’ve found, never truly disappear. They just change
shape, adapt, find new ways to haunt us.
Even on Thursdays.
Especially on Thursdays.
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