A traveller returns
First published in the Adelaide Review
I’d flown into Denpasar on the Qantas midnight shuttle from Darwin on any number of occasions but I’d never seen the Darwin terminal so empty. Even after all the news stories and the emails from Krishna and Cathy in Bali, I was surprised at how quiet it was. I reckon only one in three seats on the flight over was occupied.
True, when we landed it was 3.00 am but the Ngurah Rai International Airport was like a catacomb. Even the normally grumpy airport officials made a perfunctory attempt at welcoming us. “Oh boy,” I thought to myself as I headed for the door.
“Things have changed here big-time when the people from Immigrasi force a smile at you.” Selamat datang ke Bali.
Outside the terminal my Balinese brother, Tjokorda Krishna Sudharsana waited for me, leaning against his new Kijang, smoking a kretek. Hugs, tears and we climbed into the car for the 45 minute trip to the Sudharsana Puri – Krishna’s family home which comprises the eastern wing of the palace at Ubud.
It was July of this year and I’d flown up within a couple of days of hearing about the death of Krishna’s dad, Tjokorda Oka Sudharsana. Krishna and I go back a long way.
We’ve been close mates – more like brothers- since we met back in 1976. I was also very fond of Oka and I was very upset to hear of his passing.
On the way up I observed to Krishna that things seemed very quiet. Over the years I’d travelled these roads at all times of the day and night and I’d never seen it like this.
“Ah, brother,” he said, “things are very bad in Bali after the bomb. You will see tomorrow when it’s light.” And in the morning, see I did.
I’ve knocked around Bali for a long time and in 25 years I’ve seen Ubud grow from an artists’ village without sewerage, electricity and running water to a smogged, clogged tourist stop, complete with its own Post Office and at least five ATMs. But Krishna was right. This was something else. Ubud footpaths, usually spilling over with tourists from all over the world, were clear and free-running, apart from the Balinese themselves. Drivers, normally hustling work on these footpaths, abandoned their vehicles outside the market and hung around in small groups inside, smoking kreteks and drinking tea. The few tourist buses I saw were close to empty, as were the restaurants, as were the shops and the cafes. “They’re selling postcards of the
hanging”. Desolation Row everywhere I looked. . We left shortly after lunch and drove up to Klub Kokos. Krishna and his Australian wife Cathy have built a delightful artists’ retreat, Klub Kokos, in the hills about 30 minute’s walk from the Ubud market. The only other way to get there is by slowly and carefully picking your way along three kilometres of pits and pot-holes in a vehicle with a fair bit of ground clearance. It’s worth the effort. Klub Kokos gets you as close to the old Bali as I’ve been in 20 years.
Krishna is a Tjokorda from the palace in Ubud so he and Cathy have serious social and economic obligations to the people in their village of Bangkiang Sidem.
Klub Kokos provides jobs for the villagers, a market for their rice, fruit and vegetables as well as funds for the school, the roads and the electricity supply.
Krishna and Cathy know as well as anyone what Bali after the bomb is like.
“Bookings are down, well down on previous years, but people are starting to come back,” Krishna told me. “We are lucky because people who know us and stay at Klub Kokos know that here is as safe as anywhere in the world. It’s the other Balinese, the more mainstream tourism people that are suffering more.”
“People stopped coming to Bali for a while after the bomb, especially Australians.
Tourists are slowly coming back but for many Balinese it’s going to be too late.”
Knowing that many families in Bangkiang Sidem rely, directly or indirectly, on Klub Kokos for their livelihoods, I asked Cathy how she and Krishna were able to keep on being the  economic heartbeat of Bangkiang Sidem, especially after the bomb. She smiled and shrugged. “We just have to keep on doing it. We can’t stop and think about it. There’s no other option for the villagers or for Krishna as a Tjokorda. It’s his responsibility as a prince from the palace.”
The daily practice of Balinese Hinduism demands that people put in immense effort and expense, every day, to ensure that the forces of good and evil remain in balance.
That this unspeakable episode happened on the Island of the Gods has devastated the Balinese. The repercussions of the Kuta bombing on Balinese society can scarcely be imagined in spiritual, cultural and economic terms.
My brother Krishna is a painter with an international reputation. I don’t know much about art but over the years I have watched Krishna develop his own unique, identifiable style using strong, warm, primary colours and swirling circles. However, his work since the bomb is all black and red, stark whites and dirty greys. There are straight, hard lines, angles, dark shadows and faces in burning windows. We spent hours in his gallery one day and I listened to him talk about why he painted these works.
“Balinese people blame themselves for the bomb,” Krishna explained. “We believe that we must have done something very wrong for this to happen. People in Bali now look at what we have been doing in our lives to cause this.”
He was speaking of himself as well. Krishna is well-educated, well-travelled, highly intelligent and talented. He is also a deeply religious man who, like other Balinese, blames himself for the actions of a few mad men.
“I think I can paint other things again now,” he said quietly, “but I had to paint this out of my soul.”
As Krishna and I moved between Ubud, Bangkiang Sidem, Denpasar and Gianyar, doing family stuff, organizing things after his father’s passing, I saw many, many buildings seemingly halted in mid-construction.
Krishna explained again: “Many Balinese people borrowed from the banks to build accommodation, galleries, cafés and shops. We believed tourism would grow forever.
Now, after the bomb, these people have been living on what they have and that is running out. They cannot afford to continue and they cannot afford to go back. Can you imagine what will happen to these places?” He gestured out the window of the Kijang.
“The banks are in trouble because they have no way of getting their money back. So bank people are selling these places cheap to foreigners and Javanese because their bosses in Java now tell them to get back the money from the bad loans. Many people in Bali who have land will have to sell it to stay alive and feed their families. Slowly, slowly we will lose our island.”
We are 50 now, Krishna and I. When we met we were in our early twenties, full of laughter, music and Bintang beer. I used to stay at the Menara with the Mas family and Krishna and I spent many hours with his uncle, Tjokorda Agung Mas, who was, until his passing, the world’s leading authority on gamelan music. Tjok Agung had established the small Mudraswara Foundation at the Menara to record the music and the dances of Bali. As far back as 1976, Tjok Agung was worried that the influx of  tourists and western influences would distract young Balinese from learning them.
Balinese music and dances were not written down. Rather, they were taught: handed down from father to son, mother to daughter, uncle to nephew. Tjok Agung was frightened of a “missing generation”. Ironically, in 2003, it seems that tourism has provided an impetus to keep the music and the dances alive. But today there is another, perhaps more critical, missing generation.
“Many young people now have no jobs in Kuta, in Legian, in Nusa Dua and Sanur. They come back home to their villages,” said Krishna, “but they don’t know how to grow rice or vegetables. They never learned because when they left school they left their villages too and went to work - driving, cleaning, sweeping and cooking in hotels. They have motor-bikes now but they have no knowledge of growing food like their parents did. And now the gods are showing us that we cannot always rely on tourism and we should look again at the old ways of Balinese life. But we have lost a generation. The old men know how to grow rice. They read the sky for rain. They can cut the channels to irrigate the paddies. It is a science. They know when to plant. The young people don’t know these things and maybe the old people will die before they can teach the young ones. Before tourism, in Bali everyone could eat well.”
As we commemorate the unspeakable events of October 12th this year and mourn our own losses, I’ll also be thinking of the Balinese. Many of us have had life-changing experiences in Bali and many of us have had love and hospitality lavished on us by Balinese friends and family. I’ve been fed, sheltered, looked after, nursed and welcomed into a family with great love and affection. My own family knows that the one thing we can do to repay this love is to go back.
It won’t be John Howard and Alexander Downer who will lead us to victory in the war against terrorism. It will be ordinary Australian families and ordinary Balinese families reaching out to each other across the sea. If we don’t do this, the terrorists will win. And whatever happens, they must not win.