Nyepi celebration changing with the times

Nyepi celebration changing with the times

By Degung Santikarma

DENPASAR, Bali (JP): Last week, I received a strange visit.
The guests were familiar: a gang of neighborhood kids, ranging in
age from five to twelve.

It was the purpose of their visit and its formal quality that
was unusual, for they were not there to yell for my daughter to
come out to play, to ask to borrow a badminton racquet or to beg
unsuccessfully for the keys to the motorbike.

Dressed in their best clothes, their expressions a mix of
eagerness and seriousness, they were there to present me with a
list.

This document, a handwritten account on flimsy paper ripped
from a school notebook, contained the names of everyone in our
neighborhood who had contributed to their cause: the building of
an ogoh-ogoh (huge doll) to celebrate the upcoming holiday of
Nyepi (the Hindu day of Silence). They waited in restless
expectation as I scanned it, and broke into happy shouts of
"thank you, Uncle!" when I handed over my donation.

But before they could escape, I cornered them with a few
questions. "What kind of ogoh-ogoh are you making?" I asked.

"Haven't you seen the one they're working on in the village
meeting hall?"

"Of course," they replied, but that wasn't exactly what they
had in mind.

The elaborate construction made of wood, paper and paint,
three times the height of a human being, that the village youth
organization was busy coating with final brushes of color, was,
according to my young informants, "a grown-ups' ogoh-ogoh".

The village ogoh-ogoh, in the shape of a huge demon with cruel
teeth and claws, carrying a fiercely pointed spear, would be
paraded through the main streets the day before Nyepi, as a way
of warding off evil and leaving the universe cleansed for the
Balinese New Year.

No, what they wanted to create was an ogoh-ogoh of their own,
one they could carry down the narrow lanes and dirt trails that
made up their small world, one less heavy with cosmic and
cultural significance.

"We'll make a Mickey Mouse!" one of them cried. "No, we'll
make a Hello Kitty!" his sister countered. "No, we'll make a Mak
Lampir! She's the scariest of them all!" another one concluded,
referring to the television witch whose green face and evil
cackle enchanted them into staying up long past their bedtime.

It sounded like such a good plan that I asked them why they
did not take their creation out into the main streets with all
the other ogoh-ogoh from around town. "Oh no," they replied, "if
we did that we'd get yelled at by the village head. Cartoon ogoh-
ogoh aren't part of the real Balinese culture."

A generation ago, my young friends' plan might not have been
such a problem. Back then, Nyepi was thought of as a time when
the order of everyday life was suspended. With Balinese banned
from working, traveling, eating, drinking or kindling lamps, it
was a day to relax, to gossip, to play cards, or to sit and pick
lice out of each other's hair. Children would roam freely through
the streets, liberated from their chores, and groups of teens
would occupy the roadways, napping and stretching without any
cars or bikes to bother them.

Romances were kindled in the dark of the night, under the
bright shine of the stars, and ogoh-ogoh of varied shapes battled
each other at the village boundaries. The philosophical purpose
of Nyepi, to control one's physical desires through meditation,
was the esoteric domain of the elders and the priests, who had
reached a more enlightened state of being.

But in 1983, Nyepi was made an Indonesian national holiday.
And in the years since then, the "Balinese identity" has become a
hotly contested concept as Bali becomes an increasingly modern
and plural place.

With the island occupied not only by the Balinese, but by
Jakarta bureaucrats, foreign tourists, and migrants from other
islands, Nyepi has become not just a religious event, but an
opportunity to assert an ethnic pride and an official model of
traditional Balinese culture.

In recent years, the Hindu arm of the State Department of
Religious Affairs (Parisadha Hindu Dharma Indonesia), has become
more closely involved in planning and monitoring Nyepi
activities.

The state-sponsored taur kesanga (sacrificial ritual) held to
placate the demons the day before Nyepi, has expanded over the
years from one ritual for the entire province to rituals for each
regency to rituals in each hamlet and village, spreading an
official ideology of the holiday with it.

This religious bureaucracy is now responsible for issuing
formal "Nyepi dispensations," allowing hospitals and ambulances
to continue operations, and for deciding, for the first time
ever, to close Bali's airport to the outside world.

As my young friends' fears demonstrated, even the parades of
ogoh-ogoh -- previously the most carnival-like aspect of the
holiday -- had now become subject to official control, with all
ogoh-ogoh expected to conform to a "correct" Balinese model and
to be paraded down preassigned routes.

Nyepi patrols now roamed villages, fining those who violated
the silence or even pelting rocks at houses where lamps were lit.
Where Nyepi was once devoted to cultivating self-control and
freeing one's mind from negative emotions, it had now become an
exercise in cultural discipline, and an occasion for ethnic
tensions to be resolved -- at least for one day -- by the rule of
law and the threat of violence.

And Nyepi has also become, for some, commercialized as well.
Most of Bali's luxury hotels are now offering Nyepi packages,
catering to electricity-addicted expatriates as well as to those
upper-middle class Balinese for whom a day without modern
conveniences poses a severe threat to their spiritual well-being.
For a few million rupiah, these guests can experience Nyepi's
tranquility while still enjoying five-star service and freshly
prepared meals. One of my neighbors -- the father of the Mickey
Mouse fan -- is among those who have concluded that this is the
best way to go.

"We can celebrate Nyepi together as a family without worrying
about our children crying when the lights are turned off or the
video games unplugged. My wife can take a break from cooking and
cleaning, and we don't have to worry about being shouted at by
the patrol. And if we want to pray and meditate, well, we can
just do that in the hotel room."

With no recourse to the low-key Nyepi of the past, the
luxurious Nyepi becomes, for a lucky few, an ironic answer to the
contested politics of contemporary Balinese culture.