MIRAS

Indonesians love portmanteau words or words that are made from a combination of other words. "Miras" is one such example, being a combination of the words "minuman" meaning drink and "keras" meaning hard. The word flashed up on the TV screen during the local news tonight and I asked Desy what it meant. I was surprised that I hadn't heard the term before. The news item concerned a number of a people who had died after drinking some sort of lethal brew. So "miras" doesn't really refer to hard liquor like whisky but instead to locally produced rocket fuel whose composition can only be guessed. As the cartoon above says "MIRAS: minuman pencabut nyawa" which means that it can suck the life out of you, literally.

When I first arrived in Indonesia, there could be found on the supermarket shelves bottles of locally produced spirits like Vodka and Whisky. The prices of these concoctions were very low and I remember purchasing a bottle of vodka once, taking it home and having a quiet sip. One sip was enough however, and it sat untouched on the kitchen shelf for many a year until being finally tossed out during a cleanup. I don't think this stuff was lethal, just very rough, but it gave me a hint of the sort of stuff that's out there.

The supermarket shelves are empty now of all such spirits following application of the unofficial 5% alcohol rule. Supermarkets no longer stock beverages with an alcoholic content above that limit and so there are only beer and mixers to be found. The mixers are very colorful, boast an alcoholic content of 5% and contain vodka, whisky etc. as their active ingredients. Ever adventurous, I recently sampled one and got an instant headache for my trouble. So the spirits that once haunted the supermarket shelves back in the old days are not gone, instead they've been diluted and put into these noxious mixers.

Strong alcoholic drinks are still easily obtainable however, despite having disappeared from the supermarkets. I'm told that some of the vendors who push food and drink carts around the streets also surreptitiously sell quite potent and very cheap alcoholic concoctions that probably come close to qualifying as MIRAS.