Debunking 'Paradise'

Debunking 'Paradise'

Bali 2day: Modernity
Jean Couteau, et al.
Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, August 2005
238 pp

Vidhyasuri Utami, Contributor/Jakarta

White sands, lush tropical rice fields and exotic rites are the
ingredients from which stems the "Paradise" image of Bali, an
island once believed by its inhabitant to originate from a fish
exposed to light by Ida Sanghyang Widi Wasa (God).

Bali is now the backbone of Indonesian tourism. It is indeed
through the island's exotic appeal that "native" Balinese,
"civilized" Westerners and others have been into contact with one
another for much of the last hundred years. Their sometimes
difficult encounter is the background theme of Bali 2day:
Modernity, a small, yet fascinating book recently published by
Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia.

Who would be better entitled to depict Balinese modernity than
a bunch of cynical, yet debonair transnational writers -- foreign
and Indonesian -- residing in Bali? Most of the vignettes
collected in this book are from the pages of the erstwhile
English section of the Bali Post, gathered by Jean Couteau, its
editor and principal writer.

The other contributors are Usadhi Wiryatnaya, Benito
Lopulalan, Degung Santikarma, Yuliarsa Sastrawan and "Gung Gede"
Roberts, accompanied by Wayan Sadha's illustrations and
caricatures.

Bali 2day exposes the quirkiness of modernity in Indonesia's
Paradise Island. Its "natives" may see themselves as followers of
the Religion of Water (agama Tirta), but they are still
perceived, as shown in a Time advertisement criticized in the
book, as "bare-breasted worshipers of the sun".

And, although they dress in Western clothes and espouse
Western virtues, they often fail to understand modern
rationality, becoming in the process peeping toms, Eldorado
dreamers and, always, victims of ill-fated circumstances.

Yet, since it is the "quirkiness of modernity" that gives the
book its tone, the so-called agents of modernity -- i.e. the
tourists, foreigners, bule -- are no less weird than their
"native" counterparts.

They too behave in ways prone to raise people's brows. One
dreams of being cremated in Bali and another, after making a girl
pregnant, refuses to visit his young wife and newborn son before
hearing God's call and becoming a priest.

So, while the Balinese, and Indonesians, may appear as preys
of a modernity imposed from above, their foreign guests are
doubtless themselves the castaways of their own modern societies.
Both identities, "local" and "foreign", inescapably bear the mark
of irrationality and alienation.

What is, then, the value of modernity, the book seems to ask,
if it creates estrangement instead of communication?

This book, a debunking of the myth of Bali, shows us that
paradise is indeed nowhere to be found in this modern world.

Whether you are local or foreign, Bali 2day exposes many of
Bali's hidden truths. To quote from Goenawan Mohamad's foreword,
the book "demolishes every image one builds about Bali ... it is
a cliche against cliches and a collage of unpleasing lampoons
[that] make a polyvalent portrait of Bali that is necessarily
unfinished".

A must for travellers to "Paradise Island", as well as
thinkers and pilgrims, it gives a clear, yet stunningly different
view of Bali.