Bali Echo - Arts and Culture Section

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December/January, 1998
No. 032/VI/97

cover story

Christians in
Paradise
How Christianity came
to Bali

Once Upon a
New Years Eve
MC-ing a New Year's
Eve party during a
blackout

bali focus:
nusa dua and
jimbaran

The Origin of
Nusa Dua
A fable

People of a
Fertile Sea
The fishers of
Jimbaran beach

Center Stage
Steve Charles revamps
the Candraloka
Amphitheatre

Nusa Dua Nights
How to survive them

The Sacred
Wilderness
Colonial encounters with
Bali's southern peninsula

arts and
culture

Latter Day
Laksamana
A.A.M. Djelantik's
recently launched
autobiography

Kulkul
new Fiction by Gde
Aryantha Soethama

The Rat Pack
Who are Bali's literati?

beyond
bali

An Eddy in The
Counter of Time
Kayaking off the west
coast of Lombok

Slick and Cool in
Sengigi
Round midnight at the
famed Lombok resort

regular

Fashion

Adventure
Into the blue

Food
Jewel of the southren rim

Jungle Drums

Bali Update

On the Road

Home Grown
Made Adi Putra

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There was no voting on that day, and there was never to be any voting. Ashamed, Endek moved to a neighbouring village. Many of us tried to console him that Guru Sambat's death had nothing to do with his misdeed. The problem surrounding the announcement of Guru Sambat's death could not be resolved by Endek renouncing his membership of our village, we told him. It was just the price one must be prepared to pay for holding so tenaciously to the traditions of one's ancestors, and for failing to change with the times.

But Endek didn't want to come back. He deeply regretted having cut short the voting process by striking the kulkul on that day. "I have prevented the people of the village from choosing what is best for them," he said, shaking his head in shame.

We all thought that Wayan Songket would proceed unhindered with his program once the opposing team had been deprived of their leader. But it didn't happen that way. Songket and his party never raised the matter of the death knell that had sounded on election day. Never once did they bring it up for discussion in the village meetings. Strangely enough, no-one was interested in discussing the issue of the death knell. The whole thing vanished just like that.

The Songket Party and the Endek Party live on only as legend. We are one again, as if there had never been any problem in our village at all. It seems odd now to think that we had made enemies of our fellow villagers.

In the end, we went back to the old tradition. The kulkul's sonorous ring is heard on the eve of the day the corpse is carried to the cemetery. But we circulate news of the death beforehand by word of mouth, in the food stalls, on the streets, or by visiting people at their houses. The death knell is a formality that allows us to observe cuntaka for as short a period as possible.

People starting remembering that Guru Sambat had warned us of the negative consequences of conflict and difference. He had dedicated his life to upholding the traditions of our village, so that we would never have to vote on anything. People say that's how a leader should behave. But we know really, this is no more than a series of coincidences.

by Gde Aryantha Soethama,Denpasar, January 1997
translated from the Indonesian by Emma Baulch

On completing a university degree in animal husbandry, Gde Aryantha Soethama embarked on a career in journalism. But he has been writing poetry and short stories since he was a teenager. His works have been published widely in newspapers and journals in Jakarta and Bali. 'Kulkul' is but one of many of his short stories published in English translation. Others include 'Palace Wall' and 'Roast Chicken', published in the anthology of short stories Diverse Lives (Oxford, 1995), and 'The Coconut Orchestra', 'Death By Misfortune', 'The Ogik Gedegik Conference', 'Wayan Tanggu's Grave' and 'Rinjin's Painting', published in Bali Behind the Scene: Recent Fiction from Bali (Darma Printing, 1996).