Many Balinese teenagers at a crossroads

By Degung Santikarma

DENPASAR, Bali (JP): As night falls on a village temple near Denpasar, a crowd has already gathered. Vendors push their carts along the cracked sidewalk, hawking everything from fried bananas to children's toys to the throngs streaming into the courtyard.

A crawling line of cars, motorbikes and the inevitable tour buses, returning from a long day of culture-hunting, snakes its way around barricades, which proclaim "be careful -- ritual in progress", that have been set up to control the traffic. But the tourists who are hanging out of the bus windows with their cameras, angling for shots of some authentic Balinese culture in action, soon become confused.

As their telephoto lenses whir into action, what appears framed in their viewfinders is not the typical congregation of worshippers dressed in sarongs, temple sashes and headdresses, but a group filled with Mohawk-haired teens decked out in the worn jeans, nail-studded bracelets and army boots that have become the new alternative uniform for many of Bali's youth.

As the loudspeakers that have been set up in front of the split gate to the temple crackle to life, the assembled onlookers begin to grow restless. The elderly grannies who have nodded off to sleep, babies in their arms, are gently prodded awake and catch the action.

The men who are busy playing cards and chewing betel nuts in the public meeting hall next to the temple stop arguing about politics and the prowess of their fighting cocks and turn an ear toward the scene. And a mass of eager kids, some several hundred strong, take up their position in front of the bale agung (the temple's main ceremonial platform), that has been decorated with bright banners and strobe lights to turn it into a stage for tonight's event.

As they wait in anticipation, a figure steps up to the microphone. Attired in formal ceremonial clothing, he begins to give a speech in high Balinese, welcoming the audience to the anniversary celebration of the village youth organization. Over the excited shouts of the crowd, he announces the groups that will perform: Jihad, Small Dictator, Commercial Suicide, Recidivist and The Three Little Pigs.

The first band's lead vocalist, a skinny teenager with long, red-streaked hair and a chain around his neck, takes to the stage, shouting out "Pree...dom!" (freedom) in his heavily accented English before launching into Anarchy in the U.K., a song made famous in 1977 by British punk band The Sex Pistols. As a horde of black-clothed boys thrashed and clashed in the temple courtyard, one elderly village leader looked on, his face filled with worry and confusion. "I just can't understand this," he said.

"Where's the art in it? This is truly a sign of the Kali Yuga age," he proclaimed, referring to the Balinese belief in the inevitable end of the world. "Those children need to be bathed in holy water so they'll stop acting like demons."

Several hours later, the temple courtyard is deserted. A group of teenagers has swarmed the small warung (food stall) next to the village meeting hall. Fueled by a potent mixture of arak (palm liquor) and Coca-Cola, they are busy reliving details of the night's performance. In front of the warung their motorbikes are parked in a tangle, offering testimony as to the tastes of their owners.

To be truly cool, according to these self-proclaimed punks, one must remove any accessory that signals safety or comfort or obedience to traffic regulations from one's machine. Rear view mirrors and turn signals are broken. Wheel spokes are taken out and rearranged in the pattern of a star. Shock breakers are shortened to ensure a rough ride and the exhaust system is modified to make it as noisy as possible.

Even the helmets that Indonesian law makes mandatory are used to provide an outlet for their expressions. Using stickers, drawings and headlines clipped from newspapers, they cover the flimsy plastic with slogans like antimilitarism, subversive underground and the government is a liar, along with the names of their favorite bands.

But perhaps like anyone who tries to resist the social structure, their stance is marked by contradictions. For example, although they claim to be revolting against any and all regulations of their lives, they make sure to always participate in religious rituals.

A 16-year-old high school student, Gus Nik, said, "If you're not diligent in your duties at the temple, you'll get called a communist. And if you forget to ask God to protect you, you might get attacked by leak," he warned, referring to the demons which haunt Bali's crossroads at midnight and which are, he explained, especially threatening to teenagers like himself who like to stay out late at night. Gus Nik is also a firm believer in the Hindu concept of punarbawa, or reincarnation, which he hopes will let him live his next life in London, where he can finally meet the pioneers of the punk rock movement he idolizes.

But despite his firm faith, he sees no strangeness in claiming as his most beloved band the American group called Bad Religion. And his friends are much the same.

Putra, a 17-year-old high school senior, has turned his bedroom into a gathering place for Denpasar's disaffected youth, covering his walls with posters proclaiming "Anarchy!" and stickers exhorting people to "Destroy the System!" At night, Putra even sleeps with his body wrapped in chains, a practice admired by his friends as being the ultimate in underground chic.

Yet when his father wakes him up early in the morning, asking him for a ride to the hotel where he works as a tour guide, Putra switches into the polite language and respectful demeanor traditional Balinese culture demands of its sons. Pulling on the large helmet that he hopes will hide his face from any prospective girlfriends who might be watching, Putra carries his father on the back of his bike, driving slowly and carefully so the older man will not be bothered by the bumpy road. And Gus Nik, Putra and their friends are not, as one might expect of this set, "antiestablishment", dismayed to see Bali turned into a marketplace for tourist development.

Despite their T-shirts proclaiming anticapitalism, they welcome the chance to ask foreign friends for help decoding the English lyrics of their favorite songs. "I just wish the tourists weren't all so interested in gamelan music and Balinese dances," said 18-year-old Wayan Karda. "If the tourists were all punks, then Bali would really be the island of paradise!" he mused wistfully, before getting onto his bike and speeding away. Before disappearing around the corner, his friends caught a glimpse of the new stickers he had plastered to the bike's bumper: Hindu is My Blood and Punk Not Dead in Bali.