Javanese Hills, Stone and Ash

 I

Civets are small nocturnal mammals, roughly the size of domestic cats, with a distinctive gut. Their gut hosts a “secret” bacteria that helps digest fruits uniquely – breaking down the entire outer pulp, and only permeating the inside seed with enzymes and gastric juices, reducing the seed’s acidity and bitterness while enhancing its aroma. When the fruit happens to be coffee cherries, and the wild animal has picked the ripest and the sweetest fruits from the forest for itself, about 24-hours of digestion in its gut will produce droppings of coffee seeds on the floor with a supposedly distinct aroma and sweetness. It’s sold as kopi luwak, one of the most expensive coffees in the world. Capitalism subsequently did what it does to exquisite products – leading to force-fed caged civets excreting beans that are commonplace in Indonesian airports and usually come with don’t-buy recommendations from travelers. I could find several boxes of ‘authentic’ kopi luwak each with different claims and price tags, and decided that I am doing just fine in life with my regular morning coffee.

Converting poop into coffee is a strange human endeavor, and the credit of its discovery goes to the human desire for accessing the forbidden. Coffee was introduced in the 19th century as a cash crop for plantations in Java and Sumatra by the Dutch, who controlled the Indonesian archipelago for roughly 350 years. Dutch plantation owners strictly forbade native workers from picking the cherries for their own use. Driven by curiosity and a desire for the “forbidden” drink, local farmers noticed that wild civets (luwaks) would eat the ripest coffee cherries but excrete the beans intact. They collected excreted beans, cleaned and brewed them. When the plantation owners tasted this significantly smoother and less bitter coffee, it soon became a highly prized, expensive delicacy among the elite.

II

Indonesia is a land tough to fathom. It’s the largest country in the world made entirely of islands – an archipelagic state. There are over 17,000 islands in Indonesia, with the largest ones being New Guinea (western half belongs to Indonesia), Borneo (shared with other countries), Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Java. The capital city of Jakarta is located in Java, the most densely populated island in the world. The number of people living in Jakarta metropolitan area is roughly the same as the entire population of Canada, or 1.5 times the entire population of Australia. It’s infamous for its traffic, though the city’s infrastructure has improved significantly with the country’s growth (Indonesia is one of the wealthier economies in Southeast Asia), and for me, commuting in elegant BYD cars amidst the imposing cityscapes feels like a privilege.

The term Jakarta evolves from ‘Jayakarta’, a 16th century name of the city. Jayakarta is a Sanskrit term (for victorious), bestowed on the city by Fatahillah, a Muslim military commander, who defeated a Hindu Sunda Kingdom. The lines between language, religion, conquests, and the modern state of Indonesia are challenging to understand from the perspective of clean lines drawn in the modern politics of India, the country I come from. But perhaps the modern lines are the strange ones. Hinduism and Islam in their older forms, on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, were less centralized, more local, and more porous than they are today. Both have narrowed into the national, textual, hyper-masculine versions we know now: small gods and local saints and Sufi dargahs giving way to a standardized faith convenient in politics. A Sanskrit name bestowed by a Muslim commander on a former Hindu capital belongs to a religious world that existed before this narrowing.

Jakarta Metropolitan Area (Image courtesy: Jakartadunia, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The hotel I am staying at in Jakarta features two exquisitely woodcarved panels in the lobby, one portraying Ramayana stories in intricate detail, the other Mahabharata scenes replete with chariot battles and the moment when the Bhagavad Gita is delivered on the battlefield. Just these two panels carry a Hindu visual culture that is refined and heightened, a religion that took deep root in this country and grew its own flavor. The epic stories from Hinduism remain famous in Indonesia, and are the bedrock of their traditional wayang puppetry. Juxtaposed against this imagery, in the same lobby, is a Ramadan Oasis, a beautiful decor with colorful fanous lanterns hanging over a wooden camel and desert hut, to welcome guests for iftar. The city is in its most reflective and spiritual phase in the final days of Ramadan when I arrive – Indonesia is also the country that hosts the largest Muslim population in the world. I stand for a long moment between the panels and the lanterns, working out where I am: Hindu epics carved in wood on the walls, an iftar oasis at the centre of the floor, and a country with the world’s largest Muslim population going about its evening. Amidst the fantastic hospitality of Southeast Asia, this juxtaposition seems effortless, however strange to me.

Hindu and Buddhist ideas came to Indonesia from Indian merchants, who shifted their focus from the West to the “lands of gold” in the east after the Roman Empire fell in the 5th and 6th centuries. On the map, the most direct sea route between India and China goes through the Strait of Malacca, the ultimate choke point for global trade (more strategic than Hormuz, with roughly a quarter of all globally traded goods passing through it). The strait has been controlled variously from the lands of Sumatra on its west, Malay Peninsula on its right, and Java in the south, and the riches passing through saw the rise and fall of kingdoms often more prosperous than those around the Mediterranean. The Srivijaya kingdom (7th-11th century) was one of the early ones to prosper out of Sumatra, and became a global center for Buddhist learning. Then came the Majapahit (13th-16th century) in East Java, a Hindu-Buddhist empire that unified much of the modern Indonesian archipelago for the first time. Islam spread through the archipelago over these same centuries, carried by traders from Gujarat and the Arab world, and Sultanates rose as the Majapahit declined. The Dutch arrived in the early 1600s and left only in 1945. The Sanskrit-based courtly cultures of the previous thousand years produced some of the greatest achievements of Indian thought outside India: Borobudur, the largest and most philosophically complex Buddhist structure in the world, and Prambanan, a Hindu complex with Ramayana reliefs that are more complete and better preserved than any found in India today. I got a chance to visit Borobudur, which attracts around 1.4 million visitors a year, with foreign tourists surprisingly making up only about a tenth of that.

III

Borobudur was built around a natural hill in Magelang and dates to 9th century. This was the period of Shailendra dynasty (Sanskrit meaning “King of the Mountain”) that ruled Java and is associated with a cultural renaissance in the region. To get to the temple, I fly into Yogyakarta (another Sanskrit-derived name from Ayodhya, Rama’s capital in the Ramayana, joined with karta, or “accomplished”). Yogyakarta is situated in the southern part of the island of Java, and technically the only royal city in Indonesia still ruled by a monarchy. It has a surprisingly beautiful airport, with hallways and gate areas decorated in intricate Batik Kawung motifs on the ceilings and walls. The corridors are an art gallery in themselves, and most of the interior structure has a wood or bamboo-texture, and terracotta-style tiles. Every gate is a Gapura, a welcoming symbol of the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms. The city is the heart of Javanese fine arts and culture, and the origin of globally popular batik textiles. It’s also the centre of Indonesian education. The ‘university town’ feel of Yogyakarta is apparent as I drive north to Magelang: there are photo copy and printing shops, establishments for laptop repair, billboards advertising scholarships and even notary services, and several fast food joints. As the vehicle moves farther out towards Magelang, the landscape changes into lush green paddy fields, and winding roads through canopies of banana, palms, and teakwood. Java has incredibly rich, volcanic soil that allowed for massive rice production. This surplus food supported a much larger population than other islands, providing the “manpower” needed for the vast armies and monumental construction projects like Borobudur.

As we drive further north, the massive silhouette of Mount Merapi looms to the right. This is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, and is the “source” of the fertility – the ash from its frequent eruptions is why the paddy fields stay so impossibly green. The vehicle also crosses several wide, rocky riverbeds (like the Progo or Elo rivers) which are apparently “lahar” paths that form the channels for volcanic mudflows. Locals still manually collect sand and stones for construction from these rivers. About halfway between Yogyakarta and Magelang is the town of Muntilan where the roadside is lined with hundreds of small workshops. In them, craftsmen carve volcanic stone into statues, stupas, and pestles – a living link to the stonemasons who probably built Borobudur.

Mount Merapi: Indonesia’s Most Active Volcano (Image courtesy: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

IV

I am staying at Manohara, the only accommodation located inside the Borobudur Temple complex. The Sanskrit word Manohara literally translates to “stealer of the heart”, and the accommodation perhaps is named after the story of Manohara, one of the most famous Buddhist tales. Stories in Buddhism are called Jataka tales (Sanskrit for “birth stories”) and they are legends detailing the previous lives of Siddhartha Gautama before he became the Buddha. The more of the Jataka tales I encounter (primarily in Southeast Asia), the more I start seeing how much geography and characters are shared across Buddhism and Hinduism, apparently two very different religions of the world. Buddhism did emerge within the same cultural landscape as early Hinduism and shares the same spiritual vocabulary. Place names like Panchala, Hastinapur, and Ayodhya are common across Buddhist and Hindu tales, and Sanskrit serves as the common substrate for culture.

That evening, I walk to the restaurant at the rear side of Manohara, and stop. Across the lawn, half-hidden by the late afternoon trees, sits the most beautiful stone structure I have ever seen: a dark, stepped pyramid sitting on its hill the way a mountain sits on the earth, absolutely there.

Borobudur Temple (Image courtesy: Heri nugroho, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Borobudur temple is an imposing pyramidal structure built using almost 2 million blocks of gray volcanic stone. The square base of the temple can fit two full-sized soccer fields side-by-side with room to spare, and at 35m high, it rises to about 10 floors of a modern building. The structure is a massive Lego-like puzzle, with stones that were laid without a single drop of mortar and fitted together using intricate “knobs” and “dovetail” joints. The mortar-free masonry allows the entire structure to flex slightly during earthquakes, critical for a seismically active region like Java. When viewed from above, the entire structure is a mathematically precise Tantric Buddhist Mandala, representing a cosmic map of the universe. There are about 100 gargoyles, a sophisticated drainage system for tropical rains, each carved to look like a dragon. And that’s just the engineering.

My ascent begins at four in the morning. We are given thin sandals that feel like rubber, designed to softly tread the stones that have withstood the weight of prayers and hopes for centuries. A line of small flashlights threads up through the dark garden to the eastern stairway. A faint call to prayer drifts up from a village somewhere below, carried by the mist. We climb in silence.

As the first light reaches the corridors, the details become clearer, and immediately overwhelm the senses. The builders of the temple essentially “wrapped” a hill in stone and then carved it. The temple features over 2,600 relief panels narrating the life of the Buddha, his previous incarnations as the Jatakas, and the path of enlightenment, and 504 Buddha statues: a mind-boggling number of fine art installations that are essentially rock carvings done at the level of finesse and detailing of a wall painting. The monument consists of nine stacked platforms and a visitor walks through galleries making her way up to each. The walk up represents progressive realms of enlightenment. One starts at the lower realm, Kamadhatu, the realm of desire, depicting humans entangled in the cycle of samsara and the law of karma. The reliefs at this level show the consequences of human action in unflinching detail: gossip, theft, cruelty, lust, and the suffering each begets in the next life. Curiously, most of these panels are hidden, covered by a stone encasement added during construction, perhaps to stabilize the structure, perhaps because the imagery was considered too explicit. Only a small section at the southeast corner remains visible, a glimpse of the world the visitor is meant to be ascending out of. The second level is Rupadhatu, the realm of forms. To me, these five terraces are the most beautifully carved, symbolizing the stage where one has abandoned desires but is still bound by physical forms and names. These are narrow corridors lined with hundreds of relief panels and more than 400 Buddha statues in different mudras (hand gestures) housed in decorative niches. The reliefs here narrate the life of Siddhartha Gautama, his previous incarnations as the Jatakas, and the pilgrim Sudhana’s search for enlightenment. A visitor walking these corridors clockwise, as the temple intends, reads them like a turning book, each panel a chapter in the long argument that the Buddha himself was once like us. Then comes the top level, Arupadhatu, the realm of formlessness. These are circular platforms strikingly plain compared to the levels below. There are no narrative reliefs here, a detachment from the physical world. This level features 72 perforated bell-shaped stupas, each containing a seated Buddha statue. The visitor’s journey is clockwise to ascend each level, walking through nearly 5 kilometers of corridors, and symbolically spiraling upward from the everyday world toward the final state of Nirvana, represented by the empty, formless central stupa at the very peak. The architecture “thins out” as one reaches enlightenment.

Arupadhatu levels, Borobudur (Image courtesy: Gunkarta, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

I give up on clicking pictures of the panels, overwhelmed and saturated. It’s probably a hidden lesson about the nature of beauty. I start listening more intently to the guide. His hands, wrinkled and experienced, darkened by years of tropical sun, point at the clever stone joints, then to the history of the UNESCO restoration of the monument, and then to the stories of the largest panels, which he narrates with care. These are stories from my own childhood, common to Hinduism and Buddhism, that traveled from India to Java through conquests and rituals while communicating the same essence of life. It isn’t lost on me that my guide is a Muslim, who takes pride in this monument and its beautiful stories etched in stone over a thousand years. I chat with him more, and get to know his life story: his Umrah of 2015 to another great site in the world, and where he hopes to return for Haj in 2027 if he manages to save enough money. “I want to die happily,” he says. “Most people want to live happily. For me, this life is only a process. To get to the next one.” I marvel at the core of every religion that gives hope and meaning to human life, and simultaneously serves as a tool for political organization.

I sit near one of the “open Buddha” statues, one of the few open ones among the 72 enclosed statues at the top level where the outer stupas were damaged over centuries. This is the Buddha turning the wheel of Dharma. I look out at the horizons. Mount Merapi is visible, with its fiery interiors that have periodically deposited layers of volcanic ash and debris on this island over the years. A little to the right is the silhouette of the Menoreh Hills, its jagged ridgeline resembling a reclining person, who, according to a local myth, is Gunadharma, the architect of Borobudur who laid down to rest after finishing the massive task of building the temple.

I feel my breath in the early misty island air, and an unbearable lightness settles in my soul. My physical body is surrounded by nothing but stones built to enclose an emptiness. The place feels like a void, not of the melancholic type, but one that dissolves everything into it, marking everything that constitutes consciousness as irrelevant. There is no pride, privilege, ambition, or want in this space and time. I am far from Nirvana, but in these fleeting moments of almost meditative trance, I carefully note the last remnants of the physical world that appear in my mind. And I later reflect that these remnants were only the simplest things of absolute beauty: the sun rising behind the slopes of Merapi, its golden glow across the stupas, the fog in the valley below, birds waking up and darting through the sky, and a smile on my face that didn’t signify anything other than ‘being’.

It’s time to descend. I walk down in silence through the same platforms in reverse, the realms of formlessness, form, and desire arriving in sequence as the sun gathers strength. Halfway down I look back at the central stupa, smaller now from below, an empty bell against a clearing sky. The architects had thought of this view too. The descent is part of the design. You return to the world of desire knowing what is at the top, and what is at the top is nothing.

Fiji

I

“Sugar. Yes please.” (Song by Maroon 5 in their 2014 album “V”)

Sugarcane is one of the thirstiest and most demanding agricultural crops on earth. It needs a warm, tropical climate, plentiful rainfall, and extensive human labor. To plant the crop, a worker will lay sections of stalk directly into the soil and cover them by hand (sugarcane is grown this way rather than from seeds). Once the crop grows to roughly 6 to 13 feet over the course of about a year, the worker will set the fields on fire to burn away dry leaves and debris, and to chase out snakes. The worker will then use long machete-like blades to cut individual stalks at the base, as close to the ground as possible, because sucrose concentration is highest in the lower portions of the stalk and diminishes toward the top. The leafy tops will also be cut off and discarded or left as mulch. Hacking away at the stalks, one by one, a worker might cut several tons of cane in a single day. The thick, dense lower stalks, thus harvested, will be sent to a sugar mill for extraction and crystallization. It is an arduous process defined by heat, smoke, and relentless physical repetition.

The history of the crop is as brutal as its agricultural production. Sugarcane originated thousands of years ago in what is now Papua New Guinea and the broader New Guinea region, where people chewed wild cane stalks for their sweetness long before anyone thought to refine them into crystals. From there, the plant spread to the Pacific islands, Southeast Asia, and ultimately to India. By the Gupta period, around 350 AD, Indians had developed and perfected the technique for boiling and refining sugarcane juice into solid crystals, which they called sharkara – the root of the modern word “sugar.” This knowledge spread westward through Persia and into the Arab world, coinciding with the transfer of the Indian knowledge of mathematics (and zero). Arabs subsequently brought sugarcane cultivation across North Africa and into Spain and Sicily during the medieval period. For several centuries, sugar remained a rare and expensive luxury across most of Europe, where people relied heavily on honey, dried fruits, figs, dates, currants, and berries for everyday sweetness.

History is replete with winners, losers, and turning of the tables. In the late 1870s, descendants of the inventors of sharkara were picked up by the British from the fertile plains of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in India, and shipped off as “indentured” laborers to work the cane fields of Fiji, a Pacific island thousands of miles away from home. These laborers were known as Girmityas; Girmit being a distortion of the word “agreement,” a five-year contract signed by the British, often extended to ten or more years through debt, coercion, and manipulation. The arrangement uprooted families and saw a heavy death toll just from the voyage across the sea that took months in packed vessels. On the island, the workers were assigned to plantations, and made to work from dawn to dusk under the tropical sun, hacking away cane, to meet their quotas or face beatings. Women were doubly exploited with their bodies and their labor. In British parlance, this indentured system of formal contracts was a “humane alternative” to African slavery, which had been abolished in the empire in 1833.

Forced labor fueled the consumption patterns of the metropole, and the comforts of many empires were built upon the broken backs of millions. The Girmityas of Fiji never went back. They couldn’t afford the passage, or they had children born in Fiji who knew no other home. Sugar drove slavery elsewhere too. The Portuguese and Spanish had established cane plantations in Madeira, the Canary Islands, Brazil, and the Caribbean, building a mass sugar economy using enslaved African labor. The Caribbean became synonymous with sugar production, and the crop drove an enormous share of the Atlantic slave trade. By the 18th century, sugar had become affordable enough in Europe to sweeten everyday tea and coffee.

The indentured system in Fiji formally ended in 1916. The descendants of the Girmityas, the Indo-Fijians, constitute roughly a third of Fiji’s population, down from nearly half in the mid-20th century. Emigration and ethnic tensions after two coups have steadily reduced their numbers. Fiji still produces sugar, though the industry has declined significantly. The cane fields remain, sprawling across the western lowlands, reminders of the warp and weft of history.

II

The journey westward from Los Angeles to Nadi, Fiji’s gateway for tourists, takes about 12 hours. Somewhere above the vastness of the Pacific, the plane crosses the international date line, a human invention sketched arbitrarily across the expanse of the ocean. In an instant, hours vanish or reappear based on the direction of travel. The descent into Nadi begins over an endless blue with strange patterns composed of atolls, reefs, and islands emerging from the water. The turbofans slow down, the wheels extend, and the plane drops through layers of humid air before its tires meet the tarmac with a jolt and a screech. The landscape outside the windows is a riot of green. This is Viti Levu, the largest of the 800+ islands and islets that constitute the Fiji archipelago. Most are uninhabited. Some are barely more than coral outcroppings. But together they form a nation scattered across an area of ocean larger than many countries.

The first impression stepping off the plane is that of any quintessential coastal town. The air is thick, warm, and distinctly smells of the sea: laden with salt, humidity, and vegetation. I think human brains have a strange archival and recall mechanism – a smell, a tune, or a scenery can trigger vivid involuntary recalls of past experiences. For me, the smell of Nadi airport and the particular combination of heat, humidity, and sea brine transport me to Kerala, to a specific establishment called Kadavu in a town I once spent time in as a student. The connection makes no logical sense, but the olfactory memory is powerful and immediate.

The drive from the airport into town passes through lush fields of sugarcane, palm groves, and patches of forest. It is the rainy summer season this time of year, and the earth is soaked in yellow ochre mud and verdant green. Scattered along the roadside are homes made of concrete, corrugated metal, or thatched wood. There are small shops with brightly painted signs. A temple appears, its gopuram rising incongruously, a piece of South India transplanted halfway across the world.

Nadi is located on the western side of Viti Levu, in the heart of what was once the sugar belt and where Indo-Fijians are most concentrated. The city is a curious place, neither fully Fijian nor fully Indian, but something in between. There are many temples, including the large Sri Siva Subramaniya temple, apparently the largest Hindu temple in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s a large structure built in Dravidian style, with towers painted in vibrant hues of red, yellow, and blue. My visit coincides with the festival of Thaipusam, and I get to witness the decoration, the commotion of devotees, and a piece of India.

Walking through Nadi’s streets, there is a strange sensation of familiarity mixed with alienation. The local clothing is recognizable: women in sarees and salwar kameez, men in plain shirts and trousers, and the colors distinctly reminiscent of small-town north India. Names of shops are familiar – Shriji, Meenoo’s, Makanjee’s – and collections and displays familiar. And yet, the context seems wrong. There is the tropical heat, the trees are different, and occasionally there is an Indigenous Fijian face. This is not India, but its echo – a place shaped by India but fundamentally transformed by distance and history. The language is “Fiji Baat,” a creole evolved from the dialects brought by the Girmityas. It is rooted in Bhojpuri and rural vernaculars of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, but reshaped by over a century of isolation from the subcontinent. I can understand it, mostly, but it requires effort. The vocabulary is familiar, the grammar recognizable, but the rhythm is different. The intonation, the stress patterns, and the way sentences rise and fall all deviate from what I know. Some words are pronounced in slightly different ways, and the pauses fall in unexpected places. It’s a reminder of the beauty of languages and how they evolve, adapting to the environment and shaped by the confluence of cultures. Fiji Baat is a living link to the past, to the laborers who stepped off the ships more than a century ago. They brought only their dialects, their gods, and maybe hope. Language and faith are portable, and both have survived, adapted, and taken root in this foreign soil. India itself doesn’t appear to exist in the imagination of the local Indo-Fijian community, and the only connection is perhaps by lineage and ritual.

Nadi’s main street is a modest affair, a single road lined with low-rise buildings housing shops, pharmacies, travel agencies, and small eateries. I didn’t see any colonial quarters here, nor any carefully preserved historic district. Perhaps the town was never meant to be a showcase, and was just a service town for the sugar industry. There is a quiet commerce, with shopkeepers sitting in doorways, and shops with displays of cheap clothing on mannequins, knock-off sandals, and sunglasses. Obscure Bollywood music of the '80s and '90s, of the type that might be heard in Indian villages, spills out from crude speakers placed at the entryways of larger establishments. I walk the length of the main street in perhaps 20 minutes. It is not a place designed for strolling; the heat discourages aimless wandering. There are few tourists here; they tend to stay in the resort areas along the coast. Nadi doesn’t give the impression of an exotic paradise from tourism brochures. It is strikingly ordinary; a modest and unassuming working town that does not perform for the tourist gaze. It’s not interested in being picturesque, and it simply is – powerful in its lack of pretense. At least for me, there is also a pervasive sense of melancholy, as if the displacement never fully healed.

III

There is sea all around, achingly beautiful and utterly indifferent. It is the provider of fish and livelihood, the highway connecting the islands, and the source of myths, folklore, and life itself. Capitalism worked its magic and led to the development of Denarau, a purpose-built enclave on reclaimed land, home to marquee resorts and conveniently disconnected from the quotidian humdrum of Nadi town. Port Denarau is a picturesque marina lined with luxury cruisers, catamarans, and charter boats that ferry tourists out into the blue-green waters, generating significant employment and livelihood for locals in the process. There is a cheerful, slightly manufactured atmosphere here: drinks flow freely, Western music accompanies the sunset, and the mood is resolutely holiday. Every morning, day tours depart from Port Denarau, heading west to the Mamanuca Islands, a scattered chain of atolls and islets. Along the way are sand bars, crescents of white sand rising improbably from the middle of the ocean, sometimes just a few meters wide, surrounded by shallow turquoise water perfect for snorkeling. There is Castaway Island, made famous by the Tom Hanks film, and several other islands with resorts that have manicured the wilder edges, turning paradise into product, carefully packaged and priced.

Mamanuca Islands (Image courtesy: Tourism Fiji)

From my privileged vantage point at a fine-dining table at a Denarau resort, I see the white sand and hear the sound of waves breaking at a distance. The sun descends toward the horizon, and the sky moves through shades of orange and pink. The menu offers a delectable “farmer’s thali,” an Indian assortment that has undergone the same transformation as the language of Indo-Fijians. The ingredients are recognizable: dal, sabzi, roti, rice. The spices are familiar. But there is something distinctly foreign about the food: the proportions adjusted, the flavors recalibrated for this place. It is Indian food that has evolved beyond India, and does not project the hubris of India’s modern-day nationalism. It belongs entirely to the people who brought their culinary traditions to this remote archipelago and eventually made it their home. On the table sits a small bowl of sugar sachets. The irony is sharp and inescapable. This pack of crystals carries within it the weight of centuries: the labor that extracted it, the empires that profited from it, the lives it consumed and reshaped. It is simultaneously a symbol of exploitation and of survival, of brutality and of the stubborn persistence of communities that endured.

I think of the Polynesian and Micronesian navigators of the Pacific Islands centuries ago, who perfected inter-island travel on canoes, traveling between islands separated by vast stretches of empty ocean, navigating without instruments or maps. They read the stars, the shape and rhythm of ocean swells, the nature of wind, the flight patterns of seabirds, the color and temperature and smell of the water, the presence of certain fish, the way clouds gathered over distant islands, and everything that the sea below and the sky above offered. They were the original astrologers, with a now-lost knowledge system of extraordinary sophistication, developed over millennia, encoded in chants and passed orally.

The system used by these navigators was called “etak,” which is an inversion of perspective and perhaps a useful metaphor for life. Instead of imagining the canoe moving across a static ocean toward a fixed island, they envisioned the canoe as stationary and believed that the “island comes to you.”

Lessons in Transit

Fiji (Image courtesy: Viator)

The evening light is soft and golden, deceivingly so. It’s the middle of summer in Nadi, just a few hundred miles from the Tropic of Capricorn, and the tropical sun was blazing overhead just a few hours earlier. My luggage is loaded into the van that will take me to the airport, and sitting on the front seat beside the driver is the default setting in this part of the world.

“So, are you from Nadi?” I ask the driver.

“No, I am from the north of Fiji. Where are you from?” he replies.

“Washington DC.”

“Were you born there?”

“No, no. I moved there about 5 years ago. I was born in India. I only work in Washington DC.”

He nods and changes the FM channel. “You must be understanding this,” he offers with a smile.

“Oh yes, the previous one was a Bollywood song. This one seems to be a talk show.”

“Are they talking about love and romance?” he asks.

“No, it’s more like a discussion on skills needed to join the radio industry.”

“You know, there are many Indians here in Fiji.”

“Yes, Indo-Fijians, right? And they have a language that I can understand, but it’s slightly different.”

“They have been here for many generations. Most of them also speak Fijian, very fluently! You understand their language thoda thoda?” he asks, smiling.

“Oh yes, I can understand it. It’s just evolved slightly.”

After a momentary pause, he asks another question: “Is India very different from America?”

“Yes, very different. Washington DC has better infrastructure, I think.”

“Yeah, more advanced, no? What kind of work do you do?”

“I work with the World Bank. Its business is to give loans to governments, you know. For development work, like electricity, roads, schools.”

“Like here in Fiji?”

“Yes, Fiji. We have many projects here. Also nearby. Tonga, Tuvalu, Samoa, Vanuatu.”

“Wow. And you must have family back in India…”

“Yes, my parents live in India.”

“Hmm. I live here with my family. A wife, three kids,” he says with quiet pride.

“Nice. Boys and girls?”

“Two boys, one girl. My wife is studying. And I am supporting her.” He smiles. “One year done, two more to go. I struggle struggle struggle, for one year. After two more years, payoff!”

“Very nice. What is she studying?”

“She will be a teacher. You studied in India?”

“Yes. Education is good in India.”

“We have many doctors from India. And many patients go to India for treatment. So, India is definitely above us.”

“Well, India also has a lot of people.”

“Yes, that’s true. We have less than a million people.”

“And India has 1.3 billion.”

“Yeah. More people, more brains!” he observes.

“I don’t know if I would put it like that. But if you have so many people, even if some end up doing good, you get a sizeable number.”

“Yes, like you. You did good.”

“Haha. I don’t know if I really did good.”

“I am sure you did. So, Mr. Kumar. Give me some advice.”

“Tell me,” I offer sincerely.

“What should I buy? A car, or an island?” he asks.

“Depends on what you want to do. I think you are thinking about a career, which is going to be either your own business or a job where you will work for someone else. If you want to do something on your own, then between a car and an island, you would want to choose what will make more money for you. Is it going to be a car that you can use for a transport business, or an island that you can use for a tourism business. Whatever you think is better here in Fiji. But if you want to do a job, then you would instead want to think about who are the people or companies you would like to work for, what would they need, and what you need to learn to get there.”

“So, it’s about money?”

“I think it is. But not money for the sake of it. Money by itself is worthless. It’s a piece of paper. If you are alone on that island with a million dollars, you can’t eat your money. You would need food and water. I think you need to know what kind of life you want. Do you want to support your family? Have your kids get a good education? Travel around and see the world? Just have a nicer life? You need to know what you are aspiring for, and money is important to help you get there. I think money is about power. And access. It helps you navigate the world and is often the means to where you want to get to.”

“So you are saying that money is about purpose.”

“Yes. I am saying that money is important not because you just like to be rich, or because you are greedy. It is important because it helps you do what you want to do. But you need to know what kind of life you want. So, if you were to spend between a car and an island, you shouldn’t spend on the car because you just want to have fun driving a nice car. Then you buy something that’s not really making more money for you because that car will get old very quickly. You want to work hard, have honesty and intent, and put your money where it works for you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kumar.”

“I don’t know if what I said made sense,” I add.

“You know, me and my wife have worked very hard. And after she completes her course, I have been telling her that we should move overseas.”

“Where would you go? New Zealand? Or Australia?”

“Australia. Life will be difficult there, no? My wife says it’s very expensive.”

“Well, it might be. But that’s what life is for. You work hard, it might not be as good as here, but then it gets better, because you have put in the work.”

“So you think I should move to Australia?”

“I definitely think you should. Look, nobody likes to move away from home. You think I really like being so far away, instead of being at home and eating my mother’s food? But that wouldn’t lead to the life I dream for myself. If you have a life that you dream of, you have to do difficult things, the hard things. Australia might be hard, harder than here. But you go through that, and then you achieve things.”

He grows quieter. And then I hear reflections: “you know Mr. Kumar, I drive this car. I take people to their destinations. People like you, coming from America. Others, coming from all over the world. I ask them for advice. And I learn. I record everything everyone says here.” He touches his temple. “I learn from different people who have seen different things. Today, I live in a rented house here in town. $350 a month. I drive this car with TTF, $5 an hour, 8 hours a day. But do you know I was a fisherman?”

“When?”

“I was a fisherman in my village. All I knew was how to fish. Using a spear. When people from my village see me drive this car, they say really, you drive this big a car? All they ever saw me driving was a small boat.”

“That’s a beautiful story,” I say, mostly out of words.

“I came to this town. It was difficult. In the village, we had fresh fruit, fresh fish. It’s not that easy here. When I came, I used to work 91 hours each week.”

“You were doing 13 hours a day?”

“13 to 14 hours. Sometimes 15. I used to drive a bus. Sleep in the bus anywhere on the side of the road. I worked as hard as I could. Now I am working for this company, sitting in this tourist car, in this uniform. I get to meet people like you. And I still work hard. Me and my wife support each other.” He sneezes. “See, that’s what happens to me with this aircon,” he grins.

“You know, I don’t know if you believe in God, but I think when you really work hard, and with honesty, God gives you the return.”

“Yes, you receive. When you work hard, you receive. And I have worked hard. You see, I had gotten so skinny when I used to drive the bus. Now look at me!” he says, pointing at himself.

“The universe indeed pays off. You inspire me.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kumar. My name is Bill, by the way.”

“You have a beautiful story, and you really inspired me, Bill.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kumar. And thank you for choosing TTF; I hope you had a pleasant ride. And as we say here, until next time. When you come back to Nadi, and if you choose TTF for transportation, ask for Bill.”

“I wish the very best to you and your family, Bill. And I hope you go to Australia!”

We hug, and he smiles warmly. “Bula Vinaka, Mr. Kumar.”