Womankind May 2020

Indonesia is located on the ‘Ring of Fire’, a landmass vulnerable to more tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquakes than any other place on the planet. Indonesians understand better than most that life can sometimes unearth the unfathomable. In 2020, such an event happened to all of us, no matter where we stood on this rotating ball - a global health pandemic sending millions fleeing to their home country, to a nest within the storm. For the Earth, this settling back has come as a welcome relief as carbon dioxide levels have fallen by 5.5 to 5.7 per cent. While this reduction in emissions won’t save the planet, it is a move in the right direction. So, too, are the new habits we’ve begun to form in lockdown: cooking rather than eating…

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It’s the one question that we’d all like to know the answer to, so we could just get on with it - the living part, that is. If we knew what the ‘good life’ entailed then we could shun the rest, and just concentrate on the important bits. But society has a tendency to derail us. We’re repeatedly told that the good life is about making loads of money, having a successful career and buying as much as we can possibly shovel into our houses and garages. Some are convinced that they need to be famous and get their name up in lights for the good life to kick in. It’s worth remembering that the phase of flight for the Kunanyia stephaniae butterfly lasts a mere 14 days, long enough…

Some of us have been conditioned to think that creating beautiful spaces, such as gardens and living rooms, is a form of hedonism, a frivolous pursuit of the privileged with little other meaningful activities to occupy their time. But a new field of research, called neuroaesthethics, is delving into the science of why we create beautiful spaces, adorn ourselves with beautiful things, and how it affects us mentally. Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard thought we pass through three stages on the way to becoming a true self, and the first stage was the aesthetic. We live the aesthetic life by seeking out beauty and pleasure in our day-to-day life. While a painting of a horse grazing in a field may flood one person with a feeling of nostalgia, it may leave…

• The Komodo dragon is the largest lizard in the world, living on the Indonesian island of Komodo. It can grow to one-and-half times the length a king-sized bed and can weigh up to 70 kilograms. • Komodo dragons eat just about anything - deer, water buffalo, pigs, snakes, monkeys, even newly-hatched Komodo dragons. • A Komodo dragon can eat 80 per cent of its body weight in a single feeding, which is the equivalent of human eating about 56 bags of rice. • Female dragons can reproduce without a male, which can be a handy skill when males are scarce on the ground, but there’s one downside to this strategy: they can only bear sons. • Baby Komodo dragons spend much of their early days residing in trees, a…

To bond by way of ‘fabric’ is common in many cultures. In the west, children bond together when wearing matching school uniforms, as do soldiers in their green and brown army fatigues and bankers wearing navy pin-striped suits. But not all cultures have a ‘fabric’ tradition as pervasive as the Indonesian batik textile, which UNESCO has identified as an intangible heritage vulnerable to globalisation. The Indonesian batik stitches together a life from birth until death. Indonesian babies are carried in batik slings designed with patterns to bring good luck to the newborn. Across the stretch of time, the dead are shrouded in funerary batik. Indonesian craftspeople, many of whom are located on the island of Java, design motifs from butterflies, to birds, and flowers; the particular cloth, colour, and design…