Surabaya

"Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, 

zoo detractors should realize that animals don't escape to somewhere but from something."

- Life of Pi (p. 41), Yann Martel

The giant albino cat rises from the back of it's cage and lopes to front where it paces in front of the rusting bars. It, like the people around me, doesn't take it's eyes off me for a second.

"It wants to eat you," Adik giggles nervously.

"No," I say, without a hint of irony, "it's happy to see a friend, another bule just like it, in this foreign place."

Adik shudders. The sky begins to weep and everyone except me runs to the nearby shelter. I stay and watch the tiger watching me, as it saunters past the grates, swinging it's tail lazily, a reluctant arm extending a hesitant handshake. 

I'm glad for the rain. It suits this prison with it's moldy concrete and crowded cells. That the animals seem bored and depressed doesn't distress me. It seems right and proper and normal. The animals are behaving intelligently and as they should, under the circumstances. So, while I'm sad watching the matted orangutan beg for, and receive, ice cream cones from sticky children and witnessing the hippo swallow and regurgitate the plastic "Pocari Sweat" bottle tossed recklessly into it's bathtub, I simply try not to imagine the lives that have been stolen from them. They don't recall a verdant jungle with vast rivers, so any such thoughts on my part will contribute only to my misery and not ameliorate theirs.

What troubles me, leaves me utterly alienated, are the families gathered and eating picnics on top of mountains of trash. They seem content, possibly even  happy to be there, eating among the filth and other people's litter, while they watch the prisoners in their cages. And when they are done, they simply add their wrappers and bottles to the pile. I don't know who to blame but I am certain this is proof that evolution is a bad idea.

The tiger knows this too and, as we eye each other in the quickening rain, I feel we've made a pact: Somehow, we will find our way home.