Aryantha infuses works with love

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sun, 12/10/2006 1:33 PM  |  Life

Emmy Fitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Author Gde Aryantha Soethama is a Balinese who shares his passion and love for his homeland through his work.

His short story anthology published by Kompas Publishing House, Mandi Api (Bathe in Fire), earned this year's prestigious Khatulistiwa Literary Award.

""It is a victory for Balinese stories. I hope people can see Bali through the eyes and mind of a Balinese,"" he said.

""There have been too many stories about Bali written by non-Balinese that superficially represent the island and its people. The bitterness and irony of people are not captured and not genuinely explored by those who are not native.""

Bali is replete with paradox, he said. It is always complicated, tangled, but from the outside it seems loose, open and genial.

""It's absurd to see a girl in a bikini sunbathing not far from a horde of prayers on Kuta beach. It's just ajaib (miraculous),"" he cited as an example.

There is a Balinese word that might best capture Bali, ""rimbit"", which means complicated, detailed and difficult.

""One, dozens or even thousands of people will not be enough to write about Bali as a whole.""

Aryantha well understands that Bali is not some isolated, tranquil island immune to the events of the outside world. The country's political turmoil during founding president Sukarno's last years of power also marked a new chapter in the island's history.

Even in his small town, Aryantha recalled, alleged communist sympathizers were lined up and slaughtered.

He was only 10 years old when he saw ""a butcher licking blood from his sword"" after using it to behead people.

""To me the scene, I still vividly remember, was extraordinarily absurd. A Balinese, who are known for being so mannered, polite and humble, can casually cut off his own relatives' heads just like that,"" he said.

The sekala (visible) and niskala (invisible) wisdom of Bali, the yin and yang of the Balinese, can be interpreted as the inner and outer world, life and death, heaven and hell, and many other ways, he said, showing the richness of the wisdom.

This kind of wisdom, unless completely experienced, cannot be wholly presented.

Yet Aryantha cannot be considered some xenophobe who opposes the presence of non-Balinese on the island and the torrent of foreign influences blending into the life of Bali. He sees the phenomenon as a natural process that has made Bali what it is today.

""There's nothing to be angry about, it's a waste of energy. It's an inevitable natural process that we have to put up with,"" he said.

To purists, Aryantha may be perceived as a literary heretic for defying the common assumption that a literary author must have theories that he is ready to discuss.

Or he may well be considered as to have transcended to a higher level of literary understanding, which involves the senses and the savoring of literary works.

Theories then must be banned, kept at bay as they belong to the Old School.

""I can't tell if a work is literary or not until I finish reading it. If the work can evoke emotional effects such as sadness, contemplation or indignation, and those feelings are unforgettable, lingering in my mind, then I assume it is somehow literary,"" said Aryantha.

His short story, Surga untuk Petani (Heaven for the Farmer), for example, touches on the authenticity of conflicts in Hindu social castes and mankind's basic questions about the existence of heaven.

The witty plot and descriptive characters rebel against the common idea of farmers as the lowest class in society compared to the priest of Brahman castes. The worldly achievements and honors members of these latter castes earn when alive do not signify what place they get after death.

Surprisingly, at the end of the story, Aryantha swerves from another common belief -- across religious lines -- of heaven as a place where beautiful angels accompany all our days of leisure in a breathtakingly beautiful garden where sweet drinks run in the rivers and grapes hang from their trees waiting to be picked.

Heaven is a void, a barren dessert or something familiar to us from our lives on earth. Or it doesn't exist at all.

""I know if heaven is really out there but don't want to think about it. If I am convinced that heaven does exists, I would just want to be a farmer so I know where I will be in life after death,"" he said.

He does not go further in pursuing the conviction of the existence of heaven. What most concerns him is the fact that all religions entice believers with ""heaven"" only after death.

""But no religion can create heaven on earth for their devotees. Religious leaders are enmeshed in worldly affairs; politics and the greed for power that make poverty and social unfairness prevail.""

Born 51 years ago in a small town east of Denpasar, Klungkung, Aryantha loved ""writing stories"" from an early age. When his first essay was published in the now defunct Jakarta-based Selecta magazine in 1969, his parents were inundated with praise from acquaintances.

""I was so excited because people (who read the story) greeted me and wondered how a boy from Klungkung could write for a Jakarta magazine. The honorarium was Rp 1,250 then,"" he wrote in an email.

Growing up in Denpasar, Aryantha was well versed in the contrasting sides of Bali. His teenage years were spent reading Karl May, SH Mintardja, Kho Ping Ho or classic comics on wayang, and watching traditional performances such as arja, topeng, prembon.

""One of the literary works that I admire most is the Mahabaratha epic. It is such an incredible manuscript because the moral of the epic can endure hundreds of years, spanning across generations. The one-sided love story of Dewi Amba that turns into spiteful vengeance toward Bisma demonstrates a magnificent experience

""Every time we mention Bima, Arjuna, Darmawangsa, Duryudana or Karna, a vivid picture of the originality of the characters will immediately come to my mind. It took genius to be able to consistently enrich the characters over the long course of the story.""

Although passionate when talking about classic epics like Mahabaratha, Ramayana, Arjunawiwaha and many others, don't ask Aryantha who composed those greater-than-life works because he has gone beyond idolizing a particular writer.

A graduate of the University of Udayana's Veterinary School, Aryantha finds it ""funny"" whenever he reminisces about his younger days. He spent most of his university years writing stories or working on theater projects.

Later, when working as a journalist and freelance writer, Aryantha became used to writing under tight deadlines.

He eventually started a printing company to support himself and his family.

He has published four books on Bali between 1986 and 2005, looking at the social, political, traditional and tourism-related aspects of the island.

""I write them myself, lay out the books myself, print them myself and sell them myself,"" said Aryantha, who is also a columnist at a local daily.

""That's just another satisfaction in life before we will really head to heaven, if there is one.

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