A Criminal’s Mind

When I was about 9 years old, my housemaid talked about an article in Kompas newspaper. It was about a lady who forced her housemaid to lie face down on an ironing board. She then ironed that maid’s back. Hearing that, I thought to myself, “How on earth could someone think of ironing a human’s body?” To me, it was as if the article wrote about a bajaj that flew to Hong Kong.

But as I grew up and met more ‘real people’, I began to understand. I understood the pain of feeling mistreated, the agony of witnessing injustice, and the thirst for vengeance. That lady in the Kompas article probably did not wake up from a nap and suddenly get the idea of ironing her housemaid on an ironing board. Maybe her housemaid had accidentally ruined a dress which had been a gift from her late mother. Maybe she had warned her housemaid to take care of this and that while ironing her dress. No money could bring the dress back as it was, because it was about the story, not the dress.

Even if the criminal act sounds as absurd as a bajaj flying to Hong Kong, that bajaj did not simply take off and fly away. There could have been a balloon pressure continuously pumping under the bajaj, and at one point the balloon burst, and the bajaj was topped off so hard that it landed in Hong Kong. I will not justify a bajaj flying to Hong Kong without a proper license—if any 😄—but I will understand if you tell me that you want so much to put someone into a bajaj and top the bajaj off to Hong Kong so you won’t see that person again.

And as I grew older, I understood another thing. If I iron someone’s back out of rage, that someone’s face will be ironed on my mind day and night, instead. That someone’s back might heal with plastic surgery, but my mind won’t. If I put someone inside a bajaj and top off the bajaj to the sky, the higher the bajaj soars, the deeper that person’s face will sink in my mind.

Have you ever thought about a crime scenario? I have.