Dunia Distopia Baskara Putra @hindia | Endgame #146

Recap

Musician Baskara Putra—known as Hindia and as a member of .Feast—joins Gita Wirjawan for a wide-ranging conversation about music, mental health, and why many young Indonesians feel pessimistic about the future.

Baskara traces his unlikely route into music. He grew up in a family where his father worked for a state-owned company and his older brothers went into banking. He followed a more conventional path himself, studying at UI and working at the British Council and a digital-marketing agency. Music was part of his childhood, but he felt overshadowed by his talented older brother, who would tease his guitar playing. That lack of a comfortable space at home pushed him to learn elsewhere. A breakthrough performance with .Feast finally brought his parents to see him play for a large crowd. Later, he left his job and helped start the independent label Sun Eater.

He says he writes the way he does because it’s what he knows: everyday life, personal struggles, and the concerns of people his age. Hindia’s songs often begin with his own experiences rather than an attempt to speak for everyone. Still, listeners recognize themselves in them.

On mental health, Baskara has mixed feelings about the subject becoming a marketable trend. Talking openly can help, but it can also become condescending or feel like selling people’s pain. He suggests that individual distress can’t be separated from the wider conditions people live in.

That leads to the episode’s central image: many young people feel like they’re on a sinking ship, watching political turmoil, climate threats, inflation, and AI-related disruption while feeling powerless to change any of it. Baskara describes the future as a corridor growing dimmer and dimmer, with the horizon increasingly hard to see. He’s also discouraged by how people who enter the political system can end up resembling the figures they once opposed, and by the uncertainty around whether rules and laws are applied consistently.

The two also criticize the online information environment. They discuss social media’s endless conflict and “terminally online” habits, echo chambers, misinformation, and how even highly educated people can fall for hoaxes. Gita argues that literacy means more than reading: it includes judging sources, interpreting information, and managing risks. Baskara is similarly wary of AI being rolled out too quickly without enough consideration of its effects on artists and society. He says internet debates often collapse into a simple right-or-wrong binary, leaving little room for nuance.

Their conversation repeatedly returns to a practical question: how do good ideas reach people? Baskara notes that thoughtful, well-researched material can be poorly packaged, while sensational content travels easily. He praises video essays that make complicated topics accessible and argues that presentation is a tool: spectacle isn’t inherently bad if it helps serious ideas connect. The challenge is to turn recognition and frustration into discussion, collective action, and eventually policy change—not let the conversation stop at “that song or film made me feel seen.”

Despite his bleak outlook, Baskara isn’t entirely without hope. He points to progress in music, film, and technology, but says it’s hard to believe other things can improve when artists still struggle with basic issues such as royalties and meaningful state support. Gita encourages him to think long-term and keep raising issues so they can enter policy and political debate.

The closing exchange offers a lighter, memorable note: Gita calls artists and athletes a country’s best “diplomats,” because their stories and achievements communicate across borders. Baskara explains why music matters to him: a song can tell a person’s story across a lifetime in just a few minutes. They agree that patriotism doesn’t mean praising the country uncritically—being critical can itself be an expression of wanting the country to do better. Baskara’s optimism, he admits, fluctuates from day to day; it doesn’t have to be constant to be real.

Personalities

• Baskara Putra — Musician known as Hindia; also associated with .Feast and Sun Eater.
• Gita Wirjawan — Host of Endgame.