Gasibu Square: Spirit of Riung Mungpulung

Whispers of Grass Roots

“Kaki-lima” – literally translated as “five legs”; is a name for widely range types of peddlers familiar to Indonesian. The name is taken from major cart type used to carry goods that has three wheels, added with two legs of the person who push it.  Mostly are food-selling peddlers and raw ingredients, it ranges also to art products or toys and heavy tools. Kaki-lima exists in every city in Indonesia as the most common, cheap choices for eat or shop. It is different from settled kiosks like those who sell newspapers, cigarettes or coffee. It goes around local neighborhood streets and alleyways, serves an area wide enough to make profit, but close enough to walk for a whole day. The ones selling foods and snacks or beverages usually come with particular sounds differs by the food they sell. Some of them settle in one open place, or place provided for them by the municipality or private owned properties; on particular schedule perfect for consuming the type of food they sell. They open a simple tent, and provide tables with long wooden seats or just plastic chairs for their customers.

They are small scale entrepreneurs, consumers as well as producers and sellers who work with their might and their own effort for life. Even in Jakarta, where the skyscrapers compete each other to reach the sky and tens of thousands cars dominate the streets, one must find lines of kaki-lima in the back of an office building, hospital, schools or fancy restaurants – in smaller streets and alleyways. They serve the low and middle class people, workers and drivers in busy Jakarta. But it doesn’t belong only to the low or middle class people. It is just common to find a street overcrowd by fancy cars and other vehicles parked in one side, while the owners stop to enjoy foods serve by these peddlers.

In today Indonesia and particularly in Bandung, they are not just a mere food sellers or cheap alternative to eat. Their existence invites people to come and forms a social interaction system on its own web. They are essential and needed, while sometimes also hated because of the problem they produce in urban spaces. People enjoy them once for a mere needs and alternative, and now also for leisure. Such a case is obvious in Bandung, where local weekend tourists come also for these spectacle and leisure; who provide them a cheap and satisfying culinary experience. Many of which are actually no longer small scale business owners. These successful kaki-limas are already middle class entrepreneurs with bigger business chain and stable income. They usually have cars or minivans to support their business, but they keep doing the selling in kaki-limas. Despite the fact that they don’t pay official taxes in this way, it is also because of the customers who are more eager to enjoy the food in those places. These places are famous “original” spots to the customers, and they are not tempted to follow the same peddler when they abandoned their carts.

These kaki-limas are producing culture in the urban life, a slowly-but-sure performers of the city that conduct habitual activities; a mass of grass roots that anchored its existence and become one of commodity in the city.

From Kaki-lima to Kaki Seribu[1]

“Here is where the real failure of postmodernity lies: in denying the power and control of cultural enterprises that silence oppositional voices and dismantle resistant positions.”~Christine M. Boyer~

One time in a square in front of Gedung Sate[2], something was emerging. It started with a kaki-lima, walking around the open square and sometimes stops on the pedestal for their customers. In a while, some of them settle during the day on the pedestal enclosed the square, serving cold refreshing water, juices or tea to groups of running people or children doing sport. Some of them later got inside the square, and walking around during the day or always come on particular times. When little success stories flow from mouth to mouth, other kaki-limas followed to bet their luck. There are fresh juices and tea, green beans soup or chicken porridge for morning runners. Cakes and fruits kaki-limas sometimes also be seen with those who sell soups, rames[3], or noodles during lunch time. Fried snacks kaki-limas are very common, and there are also some at night with seafood, fried rice or hot soups. One thing leads to another, until one day – it became a big weekend happening with thousands kaki-lima and thousands people from all part of the city. Kaki-lima has become kaki seribu.

"Kaki Seribu" outside Gedung Sate
personal collection

It covers a whole part of the square, along with its pedestal enclosed. It overflows the streets around and occupies the major roads for a whole morning until passes lunch time. The streets are closed, traffics are shifted, and traffic patrols are seen around the neighborhood. Most people come to eat, and then stay for leisure and shop. Men, woman, girls and boys, families, friends and couples slowly walk within a sea of people, with their eyes rolling through many directions for food, goods, and entertainments. A group of girls looking at piles of old books, a lady in turban bargaining with a toy kaki-lima, and a couple blocking a way while trying to fit a pair of shoes. The bright sunlight peeks through overlap tents, over people who try to walk their way inside the square – under the shade of stretched tents. Inside the square, a little boy is running for a ball, playing between kaki-limas, tables, seats and colorful umbrellas. A man on light blue sweater and jeans carrying a big sack on his shoulder, walk his way to the other side of the square. A tall, white flag pole stands between tents, with a passage leads to it from the middle. An old man sitting on a plastic chair under the shade of a tree, watching his grandson from afar with a bottle of cold tea on his hand. A lady in black walks with her camera ready, taking pictures and wandering around. Along the pedestal next to the stairs, lines of kaki-limas offer any kind of food. Their tents stretched to the street and up to the stairs, with people sit under it. Tables are full of served plates, and wooden seats full of people.

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Puffy white smoke of grilled sate-meat brings a typical savory aroma to the air, mixed with a limy caramel-like aroma when it touch a sleeve of banana leaf, in which it is served. Smell of melting cheese and chocolate from a cake cubit enliven the air, along with dense peppery soup of beef that comes with noodle in a bowl. A glimpse of solid and tangy smell of tires intertwines with a scent of lemony perfume below the fume. In the middle, where the tents meet it ends and some kids playing around, the scent of the burning sun flows, mixed with fumes from the sweaty grass. Once in a while, a singing voice comes with melodies of a guitar played by a street musician. The high tone of honking carhorns overlaps with low trembling drums of car’s machine. On one side of the square, a dokar marches on the street side by side with the cars, with clapping sound from the horse-shoe touching hard asphalt. People shouts in one corner, mumbling in other corner, fighting in bargain on one side, laughing in high tone on other side. It completed the whole lively scene with distinct and unique melodies.

Kaki-limas come from all over Bandung when it then became a weekly event. Not only them, but also people who enjoy the feast; they come from all over Bandung and some satellite cities around. There are also people from neighboring capital city, weekend tourists from Jakarta come in their curiosity. They come as customers, tourists, reporters, or spectators of the big feast. Low, middle or high class people, with any social status are gather in one place. Near streets are full of people, kaki-limas, along with parking cars, bikes, and motorbikes. It is a feast and a festival for the city, come and emerged “out of nowhere”. Thus when it became a habitual event, the square where the event happens became a place for it. The square is called “Gasibu”.

The transformation of spaces into places requires a conscious moment, which may subsequently be remembered as relatively routine

Spirit of Riung Mungpulung

Gedung Sate Compound, late 1920
collection of Bandung Heritage 

The name”’Gasibu’ first used in 1950, to change the name of the ‘abandoned’ Wilhelmina Plein - in front of Gedung Sate [Satay Building].  Planned for the replacement of the Palace while tried to move the capital city from Batavia [Jakarta now] to Bandung, Gedung Sate now is a Provincial Government and Representative Office of West Java. As a part of Gedung Sate compound, Gasibu field was built by the Dutch to complete the cosmology concept of the capital city[4]. It stands north to Gedung Sate, with orientation to the north – where people could see Mt.Tangkubanperahu on a straight line at the end. An Islamic and cultural centre was built to its east side. It is today a Museum of Geology and Islamic centre. Not far on the west, there is Bandoeng Techniche Hoogeschool (Now Bandung Institute of Technology) complex, with Ganesha Park attached. It is enclosed by two major roads: On its north lies Jl. Surapati, which now connected directly to Pasupati flyover that stretched from main highway on the west (connecting Bandung with Jakarta) and to Jl. Suci that leads to outer ring; the other one on its south is Jl. Diponegoro. Two other streets enclosed it on the west and east. (Note that a century before that, alun-alun was placed south to a major Grote Postweg that stretched along northern coast of Java.)

It is a place to do sports for people in the neighborhood, and a place for big entertainment events. It was a place for football association in Bandung, when it has its name around 1950. Stand in front of provincial government office, Gasibu has been used for flag ceremonies, sometimes as a space for military show and annual culture festival. It is now also a place for demonstration – as the space has a capacity to accomodate thousands or even tens of thousands people. No one has a clear understanding of when and how the weekly feast and flee market began to happen. It was not under a guided or organized way, and it is clear that it emerge from the grass root society. People gather in great mass in demonstrations or the weekly feast, just for leisure and mostly – just to eat. So why, why Gasibu? What make it possible to happen on this space, in that way? People who live in Bandung for enough time, or those who has sufficient knowledge on history of the city must recall upon similar thing happened long before, on different location and different time.

Grote Postweg near Alun-alun (late 1920)
collection of Bandung Heritage

Gedung Sate seen from Gasibu
personal collection, 2010

Labor day Demonstration
unknown source

The pictures show that back in 1920, what happen in Gasibu today had before seen in alun-alun Bandung. What does it mean? It remains an open question to read and theorize. but it surely suggests that Gasibu today plays the role of alun-alun Bandung, despite the fact that alun-alun  still exists as a name for other space. What makes it possible is something emerging from the needs of people. It can’t be read as tradition, since it does not have a conscious and organized start. It is a culture that formulates and gives power to the place. It is the spirit of “riung mungpulung”.

“Riung mungpulung: bari ngariung, urang mulung”

In times they gather in one place, with food

dishes and snacks, rice and vegetables,

water or tea, coffee and rice wine

placed in the center or distributed around

They eat, they chat, they laugh and tell stories

Old couple to their grandchildren,

Girls and boys, ladies to husbands

Neighbors to neighbors

priests, puun and caretaker

Eat and drink and tell stories,

From small groups to larger ones

From terraces to the sacred ground

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[1] Thousand legs. [also Indonesian name for milipedes]

[2] Satay Building, a provincial government and representative office of West Java.

[3] Rice comes with different dish of cooked vegetables, meat or poultry. 

[4] Politically, it was for the means of indirect rule of the Dutch to direct the people perceptions.