STEP OUT OF YOUR WORLD AND INTO BIJOUX, WHERE EVERYTHING HAS A STORY

Wayan Kulit
Bali

Night had fallen again, 6:00 am to 6:00 pm, almost exactly, 3 degrees below the equator floating on the sea, warm moist breezes whispering up the sides of the volcano through the warren of villages indistinguishable one from another. My sarong wrapped tentatively around my hips and a loose shirt suspended from my shoulders, I walked down the immaculate tiled path, the slap slap of my flip-flops keeping Island time with my lazy pace. Into a waiting car and off down the dark road…no street lights, just crazy barking dogs and the ghostly dance of prayer poles bending protectively over the road reflected in the headlights of the car. I get out at an alley barely wide enough to walk through and follow my driver, my innkeeper, who speaks softly to a man sitting cross-legged on the ground. Ketut gestures for me to enter and smiles as he leaves. By now I know he will be back. He always is, and just in time, just when time has ceased to have meaning and the enormity of being thousands of miles from anywhere on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean in the East Indies with no grasp of the language and a bare understanding of the cultural niceties begins to overwhelm me, I know Ketut will appear like magick in the shadows and shake his head as he escorts me back to the car, clicking his tongue at the unorganized, the inappropriate and trying his best to elicit another blush from my pale farang face. I am on my way to the Wayang Kulit, the Shadow Puppet Show. This is not the long, six to eight hour performance you would see if you were a native, but a shorter performance lasting merely 3 or 4 hours. With 15 or 20 others I sit in a small, cramped space and wait. The illumination of 15 watt light bulbs casts a dim halo over the group. It is oppressively humid, at least 85 degrees though the sun set hours ago. There is a screen of taut linen strung up in an ornate frame that serves as the focal point for the Shadow Play. The bottom of the frame is lashed to a banana tree trunk and the top is suspended from the roof beams. Behind it an oil lamp is hung, casting watery shadows across the screen. A small gamelan group is off to my left and the dalang is smoking a cigarette before sitting down to assume his role. He is the Puppet Master, the keeper of stories, the priest whose performance of the sacred stories will consecrate the water sitting in a small bowl to the side. This holy water will be used to revive those possessed by spirits. Everything in this strange lad is tinged with holy water, holiness. The everyday mundane act of waking up launches your soul into a world of spirits and demons, of the intersections of black and white, the temporal world of the semi-divine. Everywhere trees are wrapped with cloth and small offerings litter the ground with rice, frangipani and incense.

The dalang explains in slow and halting English that the shadow puppet plays are very old. They are stories from the holy books, the great Hindu epics, the Mahabarata, the Ramayana. They are concerned with good and evil. The good characters always enter from the right and the evil characters from the left. There are heroes and lovers and demons and clowns, those with noble character and human failings, lessons in life and evil vanquished, great loss and suffering. And the dalang is their voice. Their antics exactly mirror this world.

The dalang sits beside a huge wooden box of puppets made of buffalo hide that are carved and painted. Sticks are attached to the back, one to hold the puppet up, and two to move its arms. Between the first two toes of his right foot he holds a hardwood plug, which he raps on the side of the puppet box, punctuating the story and dialogue. The gamelan plays an overture while the tree of life is centered on the screen, fluttering slightly. There is a short preamble of characters meeting by the tree. They establish the story to be presented that night. Then the main characters enter from the right side. There might be Arjuna, my favorite warrior whose musings upon duty and karma with Krishna as his guide are extolled in the Baghavad Gita. The warriors Bima and Yudistra may also be there. The evil Karna and Duryodana enter from the left. The servants of these heroes and villains are the comic relief. The dramas are age-old stories of love and loss, hatred and revenge, bumbling characters making stupid mistakes, heroes who must vanquish evil to save the world, heroines that maintain their virtue in the face of overwhelming odds. Everyone knows these stories.

As the puppets dance across the screen, I am enthralled. With intense concentration, I lean forward as if being closer to a screen already near enough to touch will render me able to understand the language. But I am merely a tourist here, reminded of that fact by the camaraderie of the audience as they laugh at the comedic action on the screen and sit silently engrossed through the battles. These are morality plays spiced with social comment. Bits of gossip, politics and community scandals all have a place in the workings of the dalang. I can understand the larger themes, but the intimate details are beyond my comprehension. As an outsider, I am little regarded until the dalang's assistant reaches out and grabs my arm. "Madam, madam" he hisses, motioning at me to come with him in that turned down, curled finger gesture I have come to realize means "come here". I keep my head low, remembering to be polite, and work through the crowd wondering what I have done, what faux pax I have committed to be thus singled out.

He pulls me behind the screen and I am instantly aware of the enormous separation that exits between the play and the audience. I have stepped over an invisible boundary into the shadow world of the puppet master and wonder, "why me?" From behind the screen it is an alarmingly different world. The dalang is working furiously, grabbing puppets out of the box and from the hands of his assistants, slamming them against the screen with a violence that isn't even hinted at from out front. He moves them back and forth with alarming speed, changing voices, tapping out messages with his toes, slapping the box and cueing the gamelan. It is a frenzy of work, two or three puppets at a time clasped in his hands, his voices seeming to come from everywhere and the musicians taut at attention.

And yet, viewed from the front, puppets glide and sway gently across the screen. The disembodied voice of the dalang perfectly matches the action and the movements are spare, simple. But back here it is a furious pace. I feel even more amazed, more in awe. I am enraptured with the flying hands of the dalang and his disembodied voice coming from a hundred different directions as if he is possessed by the very characters he portrays. I stifle a gasp; I sit on my hands in order not to clap in glee. I am transported by the scene around me and the oblivion of the audience, who can see me and see the orchestra and assistants, but seem to invoke that same sense of privacy and separation the Balinese practice in daily life. In this close and crowded society, men and women bathe in public temples, in streams on the sides of the road and never see one another. And that same agreement is invoked in the realm of the shadow play.

At the conclusion of the play, the dalang rises and moves to the front of the screen, smiling and talking to people. It is over. I slip back into the audience, a little confused, amazed at the spectacle, another dance, the vast difference between what is seen and what is performed. I have no conclusions. I have only misty images in dim wavering oil light in a crowded room at the edge of the world.

Ketut is waiting for me at the end of the gang. His immaculate white hat perched jauntily on the side of his head, his sarong folded perfectly, he stands with his hands clasped behind his back, rocking slightly back and forth. As I come out, a big grin spread across his face, "Is great good fun?" "Yes", I say, laughing, "great good fun".