Full moon in Bali. Purnama. The sky is an inky black and an enormous bright moon hangs overhead. There is a temple festival at the Pura Desa, the village temple, and the tinkle of the gamelan drifts across the rooftops.
Ubud folk are dressed in pakaiian adat; in silks, batiks and embroidered kebaya and the scent of incense, cempaka and frangipani orbits around them like a mystical halo. The full moon in Bali means ritual.
Once upon a time, in the days before Bali was seduced by the modern world of telecommunications and electricity, or "electric city" as they called it in the seventies, the full moon was also a time for children to play until late.
The young folk would entertain themselves in a happy fervor while the old folk sat and chatted until midnight, before the hour of black magic when monkeys and evil spirits fill the dark skies. For we all know in Bali that after twelve the world doesn't belong to just mere mortals.
The moon also means romance, in every language. In Bali, Semara Ratih, the goddess of beauty, is symbolized by the moon. She is the long-haired moon maiden who is irresistible to all, especially greedy demons. I am sure you have seen her captured on many a canvas at Ubud Market, the subject of so many paintings on the island.
According to legend, Semara Ratih was kidnapped by the demon Kala Rau, who had been spying on the gracious pin-up girl while she flitted across the sky on a moon beam. He grabbed her and thus stole the "light of the silvery moon". The island was plunged into darkness, the brightness blotted out by the deepest shade of midnight, not a twinkle or sparkle to be seen, except for the lazy blink of fireflies. A total lunar eclipse, bulan kepangan.
When this happened, a local demonstration took place and I am not talking about an anarchist kind of reaction or a revolutionary movement sparked by politics or parliament. A kukul bulus, or the beating of the community wooden drum was sounded, deeming the village under a state of emergency.
Semara Ratih was stolen and the frenzied drumming was sounded, like the lead-up to Nyepi, the Balinese New Year, to chase the demon away. The necessary steps to achieve cosmic order. In some villages, this practice still exists.
Back in the old days on a full moon, the rivers in Bali would be teeming with another type of ritual: the ritual of beauty. The women would wash their hair, tend to their skin and give themselves a DIY manicure and pedicure.
The Tjampuhan river became a new-age spa and salon of the most organic kind, with local folk scrubbing, polishing and preening their bodies. Picture the scene of rivers around the island celebrating a ceremony of loveliness, of laughter, longing and the promise of love. It is believed that purnama offers taksu, the essence of beauty that magnetizes and attracts. Cosmic charisma that money cannot buy.
In the meantime, this wild season of blackouts in Indonesia is stirring up a mixture of emotions across the archipelago.
In Bali, it is creating a sense of nostalgia among the old folk because electricity is a relative new kid on the block. They are reminded of the majestic power of the moon and the good old days when life was much simpler.
In earlier times, the full moon represented light and sight as much as love and romance. On a full moon the island was floodlit by God's mighty neon light of the most eco-friendly and energy-saving kind. The music in the neighborhood was one of discourse and debate, of animated chatter concerning all things Balinese, seen and unseen.
The light did not discriminate or decide where to shed its rays. It was there for everyone, all classes, rich and poor, young and old: from the Puri, home of the royals, to the Pura, temple, from the Griya, home of the Brahmin, to the village compounds. Everyone had it. And better still, no one needed to queue for hours to pay the confounded bill at the local bank. Let there be light! And once a month, there it was.
On neighboring islands, the reaction to the blackouts is less than sentimental. Businesspeople in Sumatra are becoming angrier each week with the lack of power.
Protests are growing; rumblings of a political kind are brewing. In Bali, on a black night, there is a new kind of confusion. If there is no light, who is the thief?
There is a silence in the evenings as the old folk contemplate the new evil of the lighting world. Is Kala Rau the cause of the blackouts? Or have we simply become too frivolous with Earth's resources? Are we draining the island's supply of this precious commodity and is greed the new demon, or are we, in fact, our own demons?
In the meantime, vendors line the streets selling simple kerosene lanterns to light up our blackened nights. Candlelit dinners have been forced back into vogue, and a certain type of poetry is romancing the evenings. Family discussions have become more meaningful while the computer sleeps, with dialogue on energy supply versus state policies, bureaucracy versus democracy being tossed around like tennis balls.
In bygone days there was no new order, just cosmic order of the niskala, unseen, kind. Is there is a lesson to be learned by imposed blackouts, and do they provide greater wisdom or vision? And while the lights might be off, what shines inside all of us are deeper issues of conservation, saving the planet and quality of life. Could "switched off" be the new switched on?
@Janet De Neefe 2009
The writer is the founder of Casa Luna and Indus restaurants in Ubud, author of Fragrant Rice and creator of the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival. She can be reached at janet@janetdeneefe.com.
