Other than Jakarta, you’d be hard pressed to find a neighborhood holding a communal prayer for the dead on the street and a drunk motorcyclist running over their refreshments.
The incident occurred on Tuesday at around 8pm on Terogong III street in West Cilandak, South Jakarta. A video that has gone viral after being pushed by multiple community accounts begins with a group of men sitting on a rug on the street holding a communal prayer.
Soon after, a motorcyclist rides into the frame, driving on the rug and squishing the snacks that were laid out on the floor. Luckily, nobody was hurt.
The Cilandak Police said residents of the neighborhood were holding tahlilan, a prayer gathering marking the 40th day since the passing of a fellow neighbor.
It turned out that the motorcyclist knows the people at the tahlilan, police said, as he himself is a resident of the neighborhood. It so happened that he wasn’t exactly in the most alert state of mind at the time.
“He was inebriated. He was just drinking with his college friends. So he didn’t see [the tahlilan] clearly or he might have thought it was something else,” Cilandak Police Chief Multazam said today.
In Jakarta, tahlilan and other forms of prayer gatherings being held on the street is quite common, especially in tight-knit neighborhoods. Amid a desperate lack of green space in the most densely populated parts of the capital, these gatherings often use up part or all of a street or alleyway.
At any rate, police said the motorcyclist has apologized to his neighbors for disrupting the tahlilan, and thus will not face any charges. Curiously, police did not slap him with a DUI charge.
