Denpasar -- center of modern, traditional culture

By Degung Santikarma

DENPASAR, Bali (JP): I can still remember clearly the image we had of Denpasar when we were kids. In those days -- before the word "tourist" became part of our everyday vocabularies -- Denpasar was our ultimate dream destination.

It represented all that was strange and modern, foreign and familiar, our history as well as our future. And I can still remember, just like it was yesterday, the morning my uncle woke us up to take us to witness the wonders of the city. Full of excitement, we put on our best shirts -- the ones we usually saved for ceremonies at the village temple -- and boarded the beat-up old bus that was the city's first public transportation.

Eagerly we hung our heads out the windows, ogling the spectacles that lined the streets. There were electric lamps that shed a magical glow against the asphalted pavement. There was the movie theater where Hollywood cowboys fired their pistols and Bombay lovers sang their sad songs, and the building where the bureaucrats churned out information and counted things we had never realized needed to be counted.

There were three-wheeled bemos speeding towards the university, where students gathered to discuss things we understood well but did not yet have the words for: Freedom, democracy, oppression and corruption.

In those days, Denpasar was famed as a center of both modern commerce and traditional culture. It was where you could browse the shops lining Jalan Gadjah Mada for goods from all the corners of the world: Japanese motorbikes and radios; American jeans and high-heeled shoes; Javanese tempeh and Chinese medicine.

It was where, if you were lucky, you could sneak past the security to catch a glimpse of the legong dancers whirling in the courtyard of the Bali Hotel, the island's first modern accommodations.

It was where the Bali Museum guarded the treasures of the past, and the governor's office issued five-year plans for the future. And Denpasar was also a meeting place for other people like us, people who had come to the city to be at the center of things.

There were traders from far-flung villages, who set the markets abuzz with the sounds of their bargaining and the ringing of the bells from their horse-drawn dokar carts.

There was the Arab neighborhood, the Chinese neighborhood and the Javanese neighborhood, where strange spices and languages that sounded odd to our ears filled the air. Denpasar was where, for the first time, we set eyes upon Westerners -- the sophisticated travelers who prowled the back alleys searching for authentic Balinese art and the hippies who wandered the nighttime streets seeking authentic Eastern experience.

And Denpasar was where we first encountered young Balinese who were trying to leave the old ways behind, by growing their hair long and trading their sarongs to the hippies for Levi's jeans, T-shirts and lessons in English slang.

These days, of course, the image of Denpasar is decidedly less glamorous. The tourist guide book wisdom is that the smart traveler should head from the airport straight for the cultured hills of Ubud or the cosmopolitan shores of Kuta.

In fact, Denpasar, with its traffic, crime and commercialism, is now seen less as the capital of Bali than as just another crowded, unhygienic Third World city, a generic disaster whose same sad story can be seen repeated all over the earth. Denpasar, the guide books say, has been corrupted by the West to such an extent that it is no longer even "authentically Balinese".

And it is not just the tourists who dismiss Denpasar, but many Balinese as well. Recently, while visiting a village near Ubud, I met a woman who complained about the burden of her traditional obligations, which included making hundreds of ritual offerings and contributing hundreds of thousands of rupiah each week for family and community ceremonies.

"Here in Ubud we have to protect our culture to show the foreign visitors the real Bali. But if I lived in Denpasar," she said wistfully, "I wouldn't have to spend so much time and money on ritual." It was as if, once you crossed the city limits, culture no longer existed. It was almost as if, I thought, where there were no tourists to witness ceremonies, you needn't bother to hold them at all.

But in keeping with the spirit of reformasi (reform), Denpasar is now to be remodeled. The newly elected mayor from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Anak Agung Puspayoga, recently announced a plan to make Denpasar into a "Cultural City".

To restore a sense of pride to the city's inhabitants and renovate its tarnished image in the eyes of the wider world, Denpasar is being encouraged to return to its Balinese roots.

By exhorting the populace to mount painting exhibitions, practice their dance skills, dust off their gamelan instruments that have fallen into disuse and re-renovate their homes, forsaking the rumah kantor (office house) style, that, with its sparkling ceramic and chrome cleanliness became popular under the hygiene-obsessed New Order, for a little genuine Balinese thatch and timber, Denpasar, it is hoped, will be able to once again hold its own in the competitive modern market of cultural tourism.

But what kind of "culture" will this Cultural City showcase? For while the mayor's plan is being hailed as a reformist policy, it is actually, in many ways, a reiteration of aims articulated by the previous New Order regime, which used a concept of culture to organize and control its citizens.

Under Soeharto's government, "culture" was seen as both the source of Denpasar's problems and the cure for its ills. Local bureaucrats warned about the city's "traffic jam culture," its "flood culture," its "criminal culture" and its "corruption culture".

They encouraged people to develop an "orderly parking culture," a "cleanliness culture" and a "waiting-in-line culture." Culture became a command, something to paste on billboards urging people to "culturalize" themselves in the name of order, development and submission.

Culture became a possession, like a fine piece of artwork one could lose if one was not careful, or have stolen if one did not guard it against the threat of outsiders. Used as a tool of policy, "cultures" were singular and mutually exclusive, rather than overlapping.

They were less about what people did everyday -- work, socialize and sometimes fight -- than about the monuments they sometimes produced: Temples, rituals, works of art or dance or drama. And culture, of course, was what Bali could use to bait the hook of "cultural tourism".

By performing traditional dances and traditional ceremonies, by playing traditional music and painting traditional paintings, the Balinese could convert their culture into foreign currency.

I can't help, though, when hearing of plans like this, remembering the Denpasar of my childhood. To be sure, it wasn't especially clean, nor was it especially orderly. But was it not a city of culture? Was it not, in fact, a city of many cultures, each with its own special shading, blending into a colorful weave?

Back in the days before we knew the word "tourist," we were, it seems, much less concerned with presenting ourselves as "Balinese", with "culturalizing" ourselves into a particular pattern. We knew who we were -- friends, family, neighbors -- but our "identity" was not something we needed to polish and shine and define and defend against others.

Even if we were not artists -- and most of us weren't -- we still felt there were precious things that brought us pride in our world.