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BALI – THE ISLAND OF GODS AND SPIRITS



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WORDS © MARION FRIEDEL



Bali, the island of gods and spirits, is a flourishing cultural oasis in the chain of Indonesian islands, the worlds largest archipelago. Those who know and love it call it a Garden of Eden. It is indeed a paradise, with countless temples, volcanoes, terraced rice-paddies and delightful people, who, in spite of every modern influence, have retained their original character. For more than eighty years this tropical paradise has been dreamed of and visited by globetrotters, dropouts and all those weary of civilization. Over the years countless travel books, memoirs and even novels have been written about Bali. This flood of literature has perpetuated the myths of the island yet its mystery remains undiminished.



It is six in the morning. The sun is rising in a burning sky. Its fiery disc is dazzlingly ablaze just above the horizon, the darkness is slowly retreating - first cobalt blue, then steel grey - and around the edges of the ascending sun the pale blue remnants of the night are fading away. It is an orgy of light and colour, such as might have been painted by Gauguin. We are sure that if fate had brought him to Bali, instead of Tahiti, he would have stayed. He would have found here his Garden of Eden: the colours of paradise – colours which melt away to the right and left of the road which lies before us. Where will it lead us, I wonder? Wherever we want. To a coincidence, a surprise, a spontaneous happening. It is the road to life on Bali.



The roads are a stage for happenings. Rice is drying on the roadside, and people are having a morning wash in the water-holes, but we look discreetly ahead as we drive past. Colourful baten jotan offerings lie on the bumpy tarmac surface at the entrances to walled homesteads and at dangerous crossroads - these are daily sacrificial gifts, intended to put the spirits in a good humour. The little packets of rice wrapped in banana-leaves are decorated with blossoms and joss-sticks, and they are immediately gobbled up by hens, pigs and stray dogs.



The road is crowded. Everything on legs or wheels is heading up the hill. Balinese in festive costume, women with towering stacks of votive gifts on their heads. We have escaped from the traffic-jams on the main ring-road around the island capital of Denpasar, and with the sea behind us we are heading for the mountains and the smooth slopes of a volcano. The road is getting narrower and more rural. We are driving through low-hanging rain-clouds. Suddenly we see tall bamboo poles decorated with artistically woven palm-leaves, and with long, thin cloth banners in vivid colours, then bright parasols, and festively decorated houses beside the track - unmistakable signs of an important festival, Hence also the big crowds. Men and women are moving forward in an endless procession. Mopeds pass with straining motors, carrying families of five. They are overtaken by trucks, crammed to the tailboard with brightly clad passengers. All are making for the same destination.



Officially the Balinese are Hindus. Hindu culture spread to Bali in the 9th century AD, during the ascendancy of the Srivijaya and Majapahit kingdoms. Even the Balinese language is derived originally from the Pali tongue of southern India. Indian brahmins and merchants brought Hinduism with them, together with their complex culture in which Sanskrit, the caste system and Indian mythology are inextricably interwoven. It was this which first "conquered" the princely courts of Indonesia. But when, in the 15th century, the mighty Majapahit empire collapsed under the pressure of Arabs from the west, there was a wholesale exodus of scholars, priests, dancers, artists and court officials, who all arrived in Bali. This highly educated élite made a new home for themselves here, while all the islands surrounding the Balinese archipelago submitted to Islam. Even today Bali is still an island of Hinduism in a Moslem ocean. Yet this imported Hinduism has never been more than a thin veneer upon Bali. Beneath it have survived the superstitions, the polytheism, the animism and the customs of the Balinese, which go back as far as the Bronze Age. This is how the unique culture of Bali has evolved - a tough, resistant culture, which appears to have easily absorbed even modern western influences without suffering any great damage.



Oka,, our guide, tells us that the Balinese calendar actually contains more holidays than working days. There are simply so many spirits, gods and venerable ancestors in the world beyond. However, it is not obligatory to celebrate every single holiday. "Even so, there are enough to prevent the working days from becoming a routine," says Oka with a smile. And he is right. Not only do the Balinese live in a landscape of tropical enchantment, they have a truly enchanting way of thinking. They do not differentiate between living people and the dead, the spirits and idols. I suppose we are not so different. We call our spirits either saints or devils, and our idols have the colour of money.



The total number of temples on Bali is put at 20,000. Added to these are an unknown number of family temples. There are probably more of these than of the public shrines. Every Balinese believer feels that he belongs to at least five or six temples. When one thinks that the relatively small and densely populated island, with an area of 2170 sq. miles, has 3 million inhabitants, and when one also realizes that there can be very few atheists among them, it is not difficult to understand this plethora of almost daily festivals. Oka tells us that many women spend one-third of their working hours making and distributing votive gifts.



The road leads us directly to the festival. In the stream of worshippers we pass through the temple gate of Pacung. We hear the deep sound of the gong, and the percussive music of the gamelan. magnificently as generals, try to control the happy crowd. Are we allowed in? We make a small donation for the temple roof, and we are each lent a selendang, a yellow cotton shawl, which we tie round our hips. Thus attired, we are considered fit to enter the inner temple.



A steep staircase leads to the sacred precinct. In the centre we see platforms on which are piled mountains of gifts, of fruit, coloured rice cakes and flowers. Round the outside runs a covered veranda, beneath which are stacked hundreds of ceremonial masks from 65 villages: life-size images of the good and evil spirits. The wood from which they are carved comes from this region, and they are brought back here every two years for a service of dedication. This is all very far from the rigid, authoritarian ritual of Christian worship. Everything is in motion, everything flows. Over loudspeakers priests read sacred texts in Sanskrit, and various groups, large and small, pray aloud the prescribed passages, one after another. A dozen priests take turns in leading the short ceremony. The festival lasts for five days and five nights. Over 200,000 people come with their votive gifts, which, almost without exception, they take away again with them. The gods of Bali do not take this amiss. Only very large rice cakes, about 12 feet high, are left behind on special tables. They remind one of the opulent spreads in a Breughel painting. Indeed, the atmosphere is similarly Bacchanalian. Over the five days, the visitors demolish mountains of edible gifts, and even the gods are presented with little dishes of delicious titbits. No-one is allowed to go hungry.



The gamelan music gets louder again, and ushers clear a way through the crowd. New village deputations arrive, each with their own Barong and their Rangda, the symbols of Good and Evil. The priests consecrate them, the figures and masks are taken down and watched, or rather guarded, by their village priests day and night. The hordes of tourists, who are no doubt holidaying elsewhere on the island, are scarcely to be seen here. The buses only make a brief stop; the festival was not on the tour-operators schedule; and the guides drive their flock relentlesly back into the bus. Most of them are happy to go, as they are not too keen on the huge crowd gathering for the consecration of the masks.



Yet the Balinese are so friendly. This is not a mask they put on to please the tourists, but a natural part of their character. They radiate an uninhibited gaiety and remain polite despite all their boisterousness - not only amongst themselves, but also towards strangers. You make eye-contact and immediately a smile flashes back, but no more. After two or three such contacts the visitor is spoken to. There are always three questions, and there were days when we must have answered them over a hundred times. "Where do you come from?" "Where are you staying in Bali?", "Do you have children?". Every Balinese learns these three stock questions at school, and most of them know no more English than that. It is enough though, for these three sentences are not really questions at all, but rather a form of Balinese courtesy. They show an interest in the visitor, but ask for nothing in return. On Bali, and also throughout Polynesia, those three questions are a form of greeting, just as we might say "hello" or "good morning." No-one expects a precise answer, but everyone expects a response of some kind. Just as we might return the greeting with "hello, how are you?".



On the fourth night of the mask festival we finally witness a sacred Barong kris dance. The audience reacts to every gesture of the dancers. The 4,000 spectators are so quiet that even the clicking of a camera is audible. Everyone turns round. To use a flash in this situation would be worse than impertinence. It would amount to contemptuous disrespect. It would have destroyed the sacred ritual like lightning. However nothing of the kind takes place. The incomparable atmosphere of those tropical nights is preserved. We are the only foreigners there and again and again we are greeted with friendly smiles. Guests and hosts alike know that the most important element in their mutual relationship is respect. This is what opens up the true Bali to the visitor.



"Heedless of the modesty of the Balinese women, the female tourists pushed their way through the narrow entrances to the temple," wrote a German journalist, Wolfgang Weber, in a 1939 article on Bali for the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. He had stumbled on a column of Europeans holidaying on Bali. Some of the women even had the effrontery to wear shorts. Attending a performance of sacred dances, Weber was appalled to note: "The gawping audience with its photographic clutter dispelled the very concentration without which no Balinese can dance." The German writer could already see the apocalyptic effects of tourism. What harm would this paradise suffer from the plague of foreign visitors? As the number of tourists soared, so the cultural pessimism increased. The conclusion of a World Bank planning document on tourist projects was as follows: "The outward expression of Balis culture will probably disappear, but the popular, romantic image of a luxuriant green garden will remain." We are now approaching the next millennium; every year nearly a million tourists fly to Bali. What have they left of this paradise? A happy hunting-ground for foreign photographers? A human zoo full of charming natives with their colourful customs, which of course you can only observe in exchange for a wad of greenbacks?



These gloomy predictions have a long history. Even in the 19th century, when the Dutch attempted to colonize the island, and were given a bloody nose by its brave and pugnacious people, Bali was more densely populated than Europe. Balinese culture has held out for a long time against all adversaries and interlopers. In 1908, when the Dutch attacked with gun-boats and sea-borne infantry, in order to break the last resistance of the Balinese princes and population, the nobility and their retinue brandished their kris daggers and charged to certain death in a hail of bullets from the Dutch weaponry. Almost the entire aristocracy lost their lives in this massacre. They chose death rather than the subordination and destruction of their own culture. It was a perfect example of the Balinese passion for autonomy, a passion which is deeply rooted in their culture. In the book Negara - the Theatre State in 19th Century Bali, Clifford Geertz describes the state as a "theatre" with its official ceremonial and public spectacles of Balinese culture. "It was government by drama, in which the kings and princes were the producers, the priests were the directors, and the peasantry the extras, stage-hands and audience...The celebrations and festivals were the very purpose and raison d être of the state. The power of the state served the cultural spectacle - and not the other way round."



Of course, modern tourism has had an influence. The inflow of money has considerably improved the infrastructure - or so people say. Nearly all the villages have electricity, the education system has been rapidly expanded, and 500,000 Balinese work, mainly at home, in the souvenir industry. Nowadays they dispatch carved wooden figures all over the world to be sold in department stores and by mail-order. Nevertheless, agriculture, especially rice-growing, remains the principal source of income. Obviously the Balinese appreciate the tourists dollars, but they do not worship them; they remain faithful to their old gods. They only make certain concessions to modernity, and this produces some rather strange results. Here are some examples: the Grand Bali Beach Hotel burned down almost completely, leaving only one room untouched (clearly, that must be the home of a spirit, so no-one may ever occupy it again); the monkey-god Hanuman advertises Suzuki motorcycles ( on one day in the year all metal objects are blessed, including motorbikes, washing-machines and fax-machines); and thanks to modern technology, small groups of pilgrims can now save themselves the expense of a gamelan orchestra ( the leader carries a ghetto-blaster on his shoulder. But it does not punch out techno sounds, just the crystal-clear music of Bali, so dignified that we fall silent).



The road and Oka have brought us to a funeral in Ubud. This region is the centre for artists and dancers, and it has the wealthiest villages. In the village-hall of Peliatan stands a 10-foot high bull made of white paper and wood. Men in black tee-shirts are gathering in front of the building. Since the advent of television mourning clothes have been black, though previously they were white. A cremation is about to take place.



Oka says: "The end of birth is death. The end of death is birth. It is so ordained." The cremation releases the soul. It must be liberated from the body by the flames. In this way the spirit finds peace and a new abode. It is born again.



Word of this sacred ceremony has got around among the tour operators. For days beforehand, entrepreneurial bus owners have been selling funeral tickets for the equivalent of ,8 each. Now there are some 300 tourists waiting for the party of mourners. They arrive. About a hundred young men carry the wooden bull, complete with rider, while another group drags a 15-foot high tower, on which stands a shrine containing the body. At the cemetery the deceased is wrapped in white cloth and pushed into the belly of the bull. Then it happens; the tourists push forward like a crowd at the summer sales, closing in on the mourners and the relatives of the departed. The Balinese retreat in silence. A kind of flame-thrower roars into life. It is cheaper than firewood. Two helpers hold the flame against the wooden bull, which is being sprayed with kerosene from a garden hose. The flames shoot upward, the bulls structure collapses and the legs of the corpse dangle towards the ground. Hundreds of cameras capture the moment in a wave of clicking and whirring. People fight for the best vantage-point, fresh graves are trampled underfoot. A woman uses a Kleenex tissue to wipe the dead mans ashes from her tennis-shoes, then throws the dirty paper on to a decorated grave. We leave. Enough is enough.

At the next crossroads we see a suspiciously large number of cars parked. A short distance away, behind a building, we come upon a large crowd of people. A cock-fight. It is in fact illegal, and only permitted on religious holidays, but this is another great Balinese passion which cannot be eradicated. The birds are armed with razor-sharp spurs on their feet, and the battle begins, with blood running and feathers flying. The loser ends up in the cooking-pot, the winner is lovingly nursed back to health, and a large amount of wagered money changes hands.



There is a strange atmosphere as we head into the mountains, away from the sea. "Here dwell the spirits and demons," says Oka. The massive volcanic peaks draw us onward, especially Gunung Agung, home of the gods and ancestral spirits. Deified forces of nature. In the mountains we are close to the holy ones, the forces of Good can be sensed. Below, towards the sea, looms the underworld, the Impure. High is good, low is bad. The feet are impure, the head is sacred. This is why one must never touch the head of a Balinese. Even the gait of the islanders has a hint of the divine. They do not walk, they stride, with head held high, as men were meant to. This brings them closer to their gods and spirits.



The sun sets in the west - symbolizing death. It rises in the east - symbolizing rebirth and life. I sense it every morning, when the sky catches fire. The light is indescribably bright and the colours of paradise glow.



BALI – THE ISLAND OF GODS AND SPIRITS

WORDS © MARION FRIEDEL