Balinese New Year: Nyepi

Nyepi Eve 

I drove to work as usual at 6am. The luke-warm sun was just rising and my yawns breaking with the dawn, so I was scarcely repaired for the Ogoh-ogoh, demon statues, waiting on the side-lines of Imam Bonjol (a street). Forbidding disposable Demons waited patiently for their annual evening brimstone.  

Ogoh-Ogoh

My desk job passed time in the usual way. Is your microphone on, is your microphone on? Can you hear me? I don't have the time or space on this post to explain but know this: call centre teaching is a maddening irritant guaranteed to leave one numb and dumb by the end of each day.  

Upon leaping for joy out of the office I could see the roads were already clearer than their usual insanity, only an extra sense of urgency prevailed under a giant thunderous cloud.  

A short spell of heavy rain made a false promise to soak the flames meant for the Ogoh-Ogoh before they had begun. Turn off sunset road and an eery silence holds your engine's tongue.

Pecalang (Guards, pronounced Peh-cha-lang) for Nyepi, were out on the streets in Balinese Hindu dress. Only a few taxis clung on to hopes of making some more money before services shut down for 36 hours.  

No one walks in Bali, but this day the roads of Seminyak, where a group of us had hired a villa, were as clear as those of outback Western Australia. We made it out of the house, on foot no less, to the dark streets. No lit up shop fronts, no street lights, no noise, no bikes, just a couple of territorial dogs barking at passing ankles. Balinese new year and we decided on a Greek restaurant. Humus, zucchinis and garlic breath achieved but we missed the parades. The Ogoh-Ogoh remained a far off incubus.  

Nyepi  

I woke to the sound of, nothing! How strange. And welcome.  

A day beside a pool with some books and a dog with but a few rules:  no leaving the house, electricity, noise, eating, sex or booze. The idea is that you are supposed to be silent and still so as not to attract the attention of the evil spirits passing over Bali. I can’t speak for everyone in Bali but I at least, didn’t have sex or leave the house and we all naughtily ate salads, bread and pasta together at the tireless hands of 'Warung Nicki' as she called herself.

  

During the day in the pool, a fellow Nyepi newbie, Ryan, said to me: " We should have a day like this in the West, where we're pushed in to a state of relaxation for a whole day. It's nice to be somewhere so connected to spiritual heritage."  

As the shadows grew long across our poolside paradise, a Pecalang with a Kress (sword) could see our upstairs light and knocked on the door to remind us, forthrightly, to turn it off. He was safeguarding us against the demons, so we resorted to using glow sticks by which to eat.  

Passing by the open pool Lana told us to look up to the sky. The silent darkness in which Bali was shrouded had brought the stars out.  They dangled in the sky above, some shooting across, like a sea of pendant lamps, a cave of glow worms, too numerous to count. I felt cocooned and safe; how could something so beautiful harbour evil spirits? We wondered what Bali may look like to a passing plane or a satellite image at night. 

But were the clouds and the stars, the demons we were meant to be hiding from?   

For Nicki, our own Ogoh-Ogh.