Women who are menstruating are not to enter the temple premises. That is impure and we don't want to upset the priests," the tour guide sighed into the mic grill, kissing it, wetting it with his spit. Seated right behind him in a bus loaded with men I hadn't met before, my toes twitched inside flip-flops and my aircon-frozen fingers began melting into a cold sweat. Back home, menstruation wasn't free of suspicion, but it was graciously shrouded in womanly whispers. Slouched grandmothers took pubescent girls away from temple rooms, forbade them from touching idols and tasting prasad, even sanitary napkins were rolled to a tenth of their size and smuggled in and out of chiffon dupattas.
And, here I was, in a floral beach gown, the only other woman on an overseas trip to what I naively imagined as an island of orange sunsets and thatched shacks, feeling mindful of my uterus and its role in the realm of Hindu rituality. For no particular reason, I imagined glares and murmurs and declared them intrusive. The awkwardness seeped into my numbered vacation minutes, spread them apart and made them longer. Bali was modern enough to say 'impure' to my face, but conventional still to have said it at all. With conflict came intrigue, and I was now infinitely awake with it.
To hide my skin, I stretched out a pictorial map, once warm inside a fat travel guide. On paper, Indonesia looked like broken bones damned and dashed into sky blue seas. It was fractured from itself and each living fragment was healing itself differently. Big cities like Jakarta, Surabaya and Medan had the force of man, machine and cement. Islands like Bali and Maluku were depicted in the cuteness of flower, fruit and temple tops.
Outside the map, outside the window, were rice terraces that appeared and disappeared behind stone structures on either side of the road. From the shaky advance of the bus, I noticed fierce looking statues that were open-mouthed, wide-eyed, armed and crowned, on either side of the gates. "These are the dwarapalas, who scare evil spirits away," said Veera, the guide, who seemed more objectively educative this time around. These guardians of faith stood on square pedestals. A cloth knotted on the side of their waist, a black and white chequered pattern running across that cloth, they looked half-human. A co-existence of black with its visual opposite stands for the neutrality of extreme opposites. In similar graphic duality, the sculpted temple gateways were split halfway down into two. There was a curvaceous engraving of flowers and faces that spilled out on either side in mirror symmetry. In local parlance, the ceremonious gate was called candi bentar. Describing the body of s tairs entering and exiting it, "Stairway to heaven", said Veera. Was he thinking Led Zeppelin? Suddenly, he was my pop-culture friend.
He then pointed to 'Dewi Shri', the rice goddess who blesses Bali with slender spikes of steamed rice that take the shape of upturned wooden bowls. Her hourglass figure made of rice thatch mostly stood outside houses of farmers. Outside centres of learning, the knowledge givers Saraswati and 'Ganesa' were made to stand. Despite the slant of Indonesian vowels along his tongue, the familiarity of tradition excited the Indians in the bus. "They're all Hindu like us," said one. "This is not Hindu India. This is Hindu Bali," said Veera, politely. The frequency of these temples was high. "Were these temples or houses with temples in them?" someone asked, before I could. "Every square is protected by God," he explained, pointing to an idol outside a bank where we got off to trade USD for IDR. As the young staffers counted banknotes, he drew our attention to a box stitched out of coconut leaves on the edge of the counter. Inside were red petals for Brahma, white petals for Siva and green leaves for 'Wisnu', some laid-back incense sticks burned over it. A couple of shiny toffees were thrown in the works for some lesser historic reason. I remembered seeing the same thing at the immigration counter and the hotel reception. There were wooden trays nailed high up into the walls, with incense in them. Sanctity varied in size, but rarely failed to remain.
On one traffic junction, there was a mammoth statue of a furious Hanuman ready to tear his offender up with his sharp teeth. On another one, Lord Rama was ordering a tour de force of monkey warriors who were shown constructing the Rama setu. It was fitted with waterworks. In Bali, even something as basic as a school bus was splashed with colourful scenes from 'Krisna''s birth.
An hour later, the bus unloaded everybody at Tanah Lot. In the touristy garb of a rocky outcrop stretching out into the frothy sea, this was actually an ancient Siva temple. To reach the shrine, people were wading through small waves, balancing their walk over mossy steps and pointlessly clutching rocky walls for balance.
A splash of steel gray waters washing the warm sand off my feet wasn't a small pleasure, neither was the sight of a raised cliff jutting out snobbishly into the sea, nor was the rusty of coral reefs down below. Women selling frangipani flowers made of paper, along with their husbands who sold kites shaped like ships, brought nature closer to culture.
Our nameless lunch venue looked out at a valley terraced with paddy and verdant with dew. On shiny porcelain plates, sweet peanut sauce joined up with the red chilly and soy paste called samba in the crunchiness of beans, in the juiciness of lamb, in hardened tofu, in supple duck. Most meals came with tall glasses of fresh aloe vera juice with long gel strains. As I used my bendy straw like a chopstick to catch hold of these slimy, reptile-esque entities, a waiter remarked 'Lidah Buaya', his way of telling me I was trying to eat a crocodile's tongue.
The next stop, Ulun Danu, was higher up. There was a cluster of temples with courtyards between them, pagodas and a still lake with boating activity. The architecture got denser and now featured gold motifs on doorways. The sight of a lonely pagoda standing unmoved even as a misty lake and a necklace of hills tickled its back was blessed with photographic energy. And, the busloads of students who flailed about with selfie sticks seemed to be making the most of it.
In Bali's twinkling heartland Seminyak, the bars and pubs poured out onto streets almost in European languor; the amber string lights swayed in coastal breeze. Here, darling boutiques decked out with bird cages and tissue curtains sold soft fabrics, gems, hats and other prettiness. While some shops welcomed us with 'Om Swastiastu', others greeted us with 'Selamat Datang', this reminder of Indonesia's Semitic demographic was almost as refreshing as India's 'Salaam-Namaste' harmony. At Ubud village, hot-pink Buddhas, bamboo xylophones, shaded basket-ware, scarves and sarongs with batik prints caught the eye.
The last leg of the trip was spent away from temple squares in the sinful company of nothingness. There was beige sand and half a dozen coconut mojitos that found each other through me, along Kuta beach.
Bali was more Orient than I was. Before touchdown, I shamelessly reduced it to the image of a tired-of-it-all Julia Roberts from Eat Pray Love; out to find what everybody in a modern world believes to have lost: 'inner balance'. The ground reality was less make-believe. The flight of Wisnu's Garuda watches over the locals, and that is what makes them smile tirelessly even as they live through a sharp fall in hotel rates. They go about muddling tropical mango with vodka for pennies, keeping hot rocks along spines for some more pennies, taking tourists by the hand into snorkel-able waters, holding guns to etch out innocent flowers on forearms, lighting candles along the edges of backlit Jacuzzis. In Bali, a minimum wage of $123 is an everyday concern.
Maybe, an opportunity to lose 'inner balance' in the Occident is an equally cathartic concept for some.
Earn, prosper, live?
Source: Upon this Island of Instances
Motorcycles waiting to cross the Sunda Strait at the Merak Port. (Photo source: id.wikipedia.org/Coris)
Manny Pacquiao, President Jokowi and Mary Jane Veloso. Photo source: indopos.co.id