The Catch?

I feel like writing a photographic essay but my mood is too flippant. Perhaps I am running away from hüzün. The historic city is somehow not for me today and yet I am still here right in the middle of it. Resky in Yogya has asked me for photographs so that he can assess the suasana of Melaka. Suasana is a beautiful word - the feel, the atmosphere, the spirit. I am trying to work out what the feel of this place actually is. I only have my snapshots to offer him.

We may read the past into the cityscape as lack, absence - and wistfulness. However, I am afraid what the inhabitants read is not any of that at all. That is because for them the place is not in the past. It is the present. What links are there to the past and the future then? I think the various religious buildings are a good bet as well as some of the cemeteries. These are far more important than any of the other buildings in town, whether public or private, of a commercial, residential or (as is often the case) mixed nature. Melaka by the way has what is reputedly the largest Chinese cemetery outside of China. It dates back to the fifteenth century and was in use until very recently. It also has Malaysia's oldest Chinese temple.

To me this is what links most people here to the past and future, not the architectonic heritage of the city as a whole. This last in fact does not mean much to most Melakans. That is why it is destroyed so often and so nonchalantly. This is in fact not a place for hüzün, saudades, or kkenang. It is a commercial city. In spite of all the tales woven around the wondrous Melaka Sultanate in the postcolonial era, in reality this has always been a maritime port sunk to the level of a provincial city during the nineteenth century. No Istanbul, and not even Trengganu. 

Namun suasananya baik. 

Ancient Times

The Early Eighteenth Century

The Mid-Eighteenth Century/Nineteenth Century

The 1920s

The Late Eigtheenth Century

Eighteenth Century Again?

Definitely the Early Twentieth Against the Eighteenth Centuries

Long, long ago back in the twentieth century

The Eighteenth Century Tout Court

Perigi Raja - Princess's Well, Fifteenth Century

São Pedro, Páscoa, 2010