The air in Giriloyo village, Yogyakarta smells like wax and rain. I’m perched on a creaky wooden stool, clutching a canting, a pen-like tool that drips hot wax onto cotton. My hand shakes, and a wobbly line spreads across the fabric. Across from me, Ibu Sri, a batik artisan with grey-streaked hair, doesn’t flinch. She dips her canting into the wax pot and traces a perfect kawung motif — four circles, like a clover, symbolising purity. “Slow,” she says in Bahasa, her voice calm. “Feel the cloth.”
I’ve lived in Yogyakarta for three years, long enough to call it home. I’m not Javanese, but this city has claimed me. I know its mornings — vendors hawking gudeg at dawn, the clang of angkringan carts, students arguing over charred kopi joss at kedai stalls. Yogyakarta doesn’t shout its secrets; it waits for you to notice. Nowhere is this truer than in batik, the hand-drawn art that’s as much a part of this place as the Sultan’s Palace or the wayang kulit puppets flickering at night.
My friend Rara, born and raised here, invited me to her uncle’s batik workshop in Giriloyo, a village just outside the city. I thought I’d watch, maybe snap photos. Instead, I was handed a canting and told to sit. The workshop is simple — open to the breeze, with banana trees rustling outside. Strips of dyed cloth hang across bamboo poles, glowing indigo and turmeric in the sunlight. No machines hum here. Just hands — some wrinkled, some young — dipping, dyeing, waxing.
Mornings in the workshop start early. Pak Bagus, Rara’s uncle, brews tea while Siti, a teenage artisan, teases her cousin for smudging his cloth. Kids from the village dart past, their shouts mixing with the cluck of chickens. By eight, everyone’s at work, the air thick with focus. Ibu Wulan hums a Javanese tune, her fingers stained blue from indigo.
“Keeps me calm,” she says when I ask.
These moments — the banter, the hums — make the workshop feel alive, like a family.
Pak Bagus runs the place. He’s wiry, with a laugh that cuts through the humid air. “Batik tulis takes time,” he tells me, gesturing to a half-finished cloth. “Weeks, sometimes months. You learn with your hands first.” So I try. The wax burns my fingers when I tilt the canting wrong. My kawung motif looks more like a squashed mango. Ibu Sri chuckles, not unkindly, and shows me again.
Batik isn’t just drawing on fabric. Every motif carries a story. Parang, sharp and slanted, means strength, worn by warriors. Truntum, a starburst of tiny flowers, is for love that grows, stitched into wedding sarongs.
Over the week, I spend mornings waxing and dyeing, afternoons eating nasi kucing — rice wrapped in banana leaves — with the artisans. There are a dozen of them, mostly women, some as young as 16. Siti tells me she’s saving her batik earnings for university.
“This isn’t old-fashioned,” she says, pointing to her cloth, a modern ceplok motif with bold lines. “It’s us.” Her mother, Ibu Wulan, sits nearby. She supports three kids alone, batik her only income. “My grandmother taught me,” she says. “Now I teach Siti. It’s our root.”
Their stories hit me hard. Batik is survival. Mass-produced prints flood Yogyakarta’s markets, cheaper and faster. Tourists sometimes buy them, not knowing the difference. But these artisans keep going. They use natural dyes, hand-draw every line.
Some, like Pak Bagus, teach workshops to foreigners or sell online — not for fame but to keep batik alive. “If we stop,” he says, “Yogyakarta loses its voice.”
Last weekend, I visited Pasar Beringharjo, Yogyakarta’s biggest market, to see batik in the city’s pulse. Stalls overflowed with sarongs, shirts, headscarves. An old woman haggled over a parang-patterned cloth, saying it was for her son’s graduation. Nearby, a street performer wore a truntum vest, dancing to gamelan music.
Batik wasn’t just for sale — it was alive, worn, celebrated. I thought of Ibu Sri’s steady hands, how her kawung motifs might end up here, part of someone’s story.
Three years ago, I was an outsider, stumbling over Bahasa at the market. Now, I join Rara’s family for Lebaran, help clean the local mosque before Ramadan. Yogyakarta has woven me in, and batik is part of that.
By Friday, I’ve made a handkerchief, my kawung motif: uneven, but mine. The dye bleeds a little, but Ibu Sri nods: “It’s yours,” she says. I keep it in my bag, a reminder of hands that taught me patience.
Batik has changed me. I want to learn more — maybe the parang motif next, or how to mix dyes from scratch. I’ve started showing my friends, telling them about Siti’s dreams and Ibu Wulan’s strength. One day, I might teach someone else, pass on what I’ve learned.
Batik’s taught me to stay patient, to belong, to carry this city with me.
Now, walking through Malioboro market, I see batik everywhere — sarongs, shirts, headscarves. I spot parang on an old man’s cap, truntum on a woman’s skirt. Each pattern feels like a conversation. I think of Ibu Wulan’s stained fingers, Siti’s bold designs, Pak Bagus’s laugh.
Batik isn’t just cloth. It’s Yogyakarta’s heartbeat — steady, stubborn, alive.
This city has taught me to move slower, to look closer. To listen when the stories aren’t spoken but drawn, waxed, dyed. My handkerchief, flawed as it is, holds all of it — the village, the artisans, the home I’ve found here.
