The Sawah Or Paddy Field In Former Times

The Sawah Or Paddy Field In Former Times*

I imagine that a paddy corn stalk would be graceful as an ornament such as a necklace, worn on the shoulder, on the breast, around the wrist or hung in a bunch in an entrance, on a door, a window as decoration.

Watch men and women reaping paddy with the ani-ani(very small paddy cutter), women pounding merrily together in self-improvised rithm in the lesung, (a boatlike holed out big trunk of a tree), then clear them from the husks on the tampah(a very broad rounded tray) by throwing the corn up and catching it, up and catching it, up ... There is a Tapanuli song Sege-sege about it,

See a wonderful paddy forest from beneath and waving ripe golden paddy corn in the wind from up above, the saung,(bamboo shelter on a sawah) the wind mills to scare the birds, the buffalow, ...

The sawah(rice-field) with abundant fish and many frogs, the white kuntul fishing-bird, hear the sounds, sight of falling water from sawahto sawah, feel, hear the wind rustling, sighing, blowing in your ears, the suling (flute) so weeping one would get a heartache.

And nearby, a kali(streamlet), a bamboo grove, a desa (village), the picturesque pedati (cart with a triangled or rounded roof) and a driver, drawn by a cow slowly walking on the lonely road so peaceful.

And instead, Indonesians pride themselves with showing the village bamboo cottages,  huts,

saungs, sawahs, tropical rain-forests in an international exhibition which most are no more, almost no more today, yet, they themselves stay, live in houses, mansions, cities, ...

March 2012

* The pictures are of today's.