Feet of clay? Time to deflate those airs and graces

Broto Dharma, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A sigh was heard amid the clinking of plates and coffee cups being cleared from the table behind me at a five-star hotel's coffee shop in Central Jakarta.

I have been a regular there for years, occasionally stopping in for a cup of coffee and a bite to eat on the way to the office.

"That's what we call a real stuck up Indonesian," the waitress said, referring to the man who had just left, as she passed me on the way back to wipe down the table.

She proceeded to pull down from a back shelf a book on the court batik of Central Java: Its cover showed a Javanese aristocratic family in the late 19th century.

"He pointed it out to me and said, 'Mbak (miss), look, they're water dressed in all their finery but their feet still look like buffalo hooves,'" she blurted out.

"Then he said that he had a photograph of his own grandmother, and how embarrassing it was that she had no shoes on."

I had not really paid attention to the man or the statuesque Western woman with him, although I did hear a snatch of their conversation about his grandmother.

A bit taken aback by the waitress' story -- and also her seething anger -- I told her that obviously Mr. Arrogant was trying to impress his significant other. It was his sniveling way of showing her that he was a higher rung up on the sophistication scale from his compatriots -- and even his own flesh and blood.

"Maybe, but he must know that some people in the provinces still don't even have shoes to wear. That's arrogant for you."

The irony of the situation was not lost on me. Travel back two generations on both sides of my own family and there is a steam- engine driver and mill worker to be found. Fortunately, educational scholarships gave both my parents opportunities, and afforded me and my siblings a relatively privileged upbringing.

I have no time for airs and graces, the pretending to be something we are not. I giggle inside when I see people put on pedestals or others standing on ceremony merely because of someone's name or inheritance.

It was not always the case. Years ago, when I was a high school intern at a museum in New York City, the big deal was that Caroline Kennedy -- the daughter of Jackie O and the second youngest member of Camelot -- worked in the Film and TV Department.

A CK sighting was a big deal for 17-year-old me, and it suddenly became a possibility one day when a document had to be taken upstairs to her office.

When I got to her cubicle, taking the elevator with a guard posted in it, she was on the phone and I sheepishly put the paper down on her desk.

"Thanks," she called to me as I left, a simple, polite gesture but one that took me aback.

What had I expected? A harrumph and a shouted, "Don't bother me when I'm on the phone, you lowly ignoramus"?

But some of us can lunch quite nicely on an exalted name and pedigree for the rest of our lives.

On the same morning as the coffee shop encounter, a popular quiz show featured teams of the descendants of national heroes. OK, people, let's get our foot in the door, whether it's a quiz show or a cushy job, simply because granddad stood up to the colonialists, regardless of our own personal characteristics or achievements.

Of course, as an American friend pointed out to me when I told him the "hoof" story, some of us enjoy our own elevated position here just by being Western expatriates. Given a massive head start in the competition of life by being born into affluent societies, we now get to ride around in taxis and occasionally feast in luxury hotels. Ooh, and we can bitch and moan about it too.

Wow, we really lucked out: Even for the non-Irish, we are living the life of Riley.

I understand a bit better the anger of the waitress, even though I am supremely fortunate to be the served, not the server. But I also know that her desires and ambitions are not any lesser than mine.

Blue bloods? Seems like it bleeds red to me, regardless of who we are. Or as my Indonesian partner once bluntly said to me during a particularly nasty fight, when I had smarmily pointed out the difference in our backgrounds (read: I'm better), "Well, your **** certainly doesn't smell any different." Now, that's a great leveler.