| Little Known
Ubud
by James Murdoch
Go to any city in the world, go to dinner with friends,
discuss recent travels, and the response would be something
like this:
"Sri Lanka!" How nice.
"Mauritius!" Lovely.
"Mexico!" Great!
"Bali?" "Yes, but where in Bali?"
"Ubud!" "Where did you stay in Ubud?"
Long conversation. "Did you eat at ......?"
"Yes, yes, yes. Naughty Nuri's?" "Of
course!"
"How is Murni? Ibu Wayan? Ida Bagus??"
"Did you buy from Puspa?"
Names and places, and street names and restaurant names,
and special dishes; there are few places in the world
that have such an international focus, able to be instantly
conjured up with a keen nostalgia.
And yet...because Ubud is structured around twelve
banjars, each with its own gamelan orchestra, a major
palace, a major market, the required three major temples,
a major playing field that acts as a kind of town square,
the lungs of the town, it has become an organic whole.
It has kept its spirit in spite of a wild and unplanned
development. Its netwoek of connecting laneways give
it life and movement quite independent from ussual tourist
traffic. There are no traffic lights!
After the tragic events of October 2002, and the cessation
of tourism, life went on as usual in Ubud. Well, not
as usual, but the daily life of ritual continued, even
intensified. The offerings seemed to be higher, the
lines of women acrrying them seemed to be longer, and
their concentration seemed to be more intense.
Much has been touted of the world-famous visitors who
came to Bali in the 1930s, and the same names come up
again and again: Charlie Chaplin, Leopold Stokowski,
Barbara Hutton, Noel Coward, but in truth they left
no mark on Bali, on Ubud, or its culture, except to
give copywriters a few extra cut lines.
There are others who did have a profound effect, namely
Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, Miguel and Rose Covarrubias,
Vicki Baum, Walter Spies, Rudolf Bonnet, Arie Smit,
Collin McPhee and Jace Belo, but these artists' impact
was to give Bali an international presence and significance
that led directly to the "cultural tourism"
that took effect only thirty years later in the 1970s.
These names are hardly known to the local Ubud residents.
Life for them has moved on.
The three major presence on Ubud emanate from the Puri
Saren, the palace in the centre of Ubud, and
the seat of powerful Sukawati dynasty -- land owners,
hoteliers, businessman, civic, cultural, and political
leaders; The Priesthood and Monks of the Three
Essential Temples, who command the adat, the
cycles of massive ceremonies of rites of passage, purifications,
and offerings, not to mention interacting with the related
satellite temples; and The Three Major Art Galleries,
Puri Lukisan -- Pita Maha, the Neka Gallery in Sangginan,
and Agung Rai's ARMA gallery in Pengosekan.
Another interesting mix in the Ubud cauldron is the
activities of a group of foreign ladies -- usually American
and Australian -- who have married mainly high-caste
Balinese men, and who have established htriving businesses,
many of them successful restaurants.
There have been many astonishing "firsts"
in Ubud over the last thirty years; electricity and
the miracle of night lights after millennia of candles
and kerosene lamps; the telephone and therefore the
fax machine (it used to take all day to make a telephone
call abroad from Denpasar), and, of course, the ubiquitous
internet.
These developments had a profound impact on the daily
life of Ubud.
First of all, nightly gamelan practice stopped. Everyone
was glued to the local banjar's b/w television set.
It was soon boring to the Balinese and gamelan rehearsals
began again. When color television came, there was another
hiatus in rehearsal time, until once again, boredom
with the new media drove them back to the traditional
gamelans and tinkliks (bamboo xylophones).
Warungs stayed olen later, each blessed with 10-watt
light globe. Gossip increased (the oil that lubricated
the daily lives of everyone).
A little note aspect of nightlife was that with the
coming electric lighting, steady, unvarying, no flickering,
the ever-lurking presence of leyeks, the evil spirits
of the night, daughters of Rangda the witch, seemed
to leave Ubud. With non-flickering lights, one didn't
catch sight of moving things out of the corner of one's
eye.
Jazz cafes sprung up and discos too, but soon died
out. The average tourist ate early inthe flourishing
and diverse restaurants, and went to bed early and arose
early. Ubud did not want to compete with Kuta. By 9:30
p.m. the streets were quiet.
Ubud is probably the last town on earth where it is
safe for a single lady to walk alone at night back to
her hotel, and not be molested. Occasionally whistled
at, but not molested.
A pretty girl will quickly learn that a hoot of a motorbike
or car is a sincere tribute to her femininity, and not
a vulgar sendup.
How old is the town of Ubud? Some say 19th century.
Some say 800 A.D. Whatever....it is old.
Recent building developments have been digging up interesting
objects that usually the owners try to keep quiet about,
as thieves or government agencies try to freeze operations
fearing takeover bids. Just as it is in Athens, Mykonos,
ancient sites of the Middle East and many parts of South-East
Asia..
Ubud doesn;t live in its past. It is too busy being
in the present, enjoying it. The laughter one hears
everywhere isn't about tomorrow, it is about here and
now.
Freely taken from HelloBali vol. 11 No. 3 March 2006 |
