Book Review: ‘Bali Blues’

By Wombat | February 8th, 2006 | 3 Comments »

And, yet another book has been written about the paradise island of Bali. However, in this tome, the author, Jeremy Allan, looks at Bali through another perspective. Jim Read reviews ‘Bali Blues’.

`Bali Blues’ ultimately tinged with hard realism
Jim Read, Jakarta

Bali Blues
Jeremy Allan
Makara Media, January 2006
255 pp.

“I’m addicted to Bali. Like a junkie who insists he can quit whenever he wants, I keep saying I’m going to leave, but I never do. Bali may not be Paradise, but it’s home.”

So says Andrew, a long-standing Bali expatriate, whose utterance encapsulates two sentiments that will strike a chord with many old hands familiar with the island: The tourist industry’s beloved “Paradise” and “Island of the

Gods” labels are passe, hackneyed and simply untrue.

Also, many foreigners who have chosen Bali as their home have nevertheless formed a very strong attachment to the place, even though they are essentially outsiders.

Andrew is one of the many characters who crop up from time to time in Jeremy Allan’s Bali Blues, a curious mixture of fact and fiction that ostensibly provides local detail, color and a description of everyday life in Bali prior to and immediately after the first series of bombings on that fateful night of Oct. 12, 2002.

“Ostensibly”, because the book comes over more like a novel than the documentation of a series of real-life events. Allan has deliberately modified the names, physical descriptions and personal histories of all characters, although a glance at the acknowledgements at the back may give something of a clue as to the real identities of some.

Included in the roll of honor for their reporting and analysis are two Indonesian journalists: Bali-based The Jakarta Post correspondent I Wayan Juniartha and Melbourne-based occasional Post contributor Dewi Anggraeni.

Those familiar with Allan’s previous book, Jakarta Jive, will instantly be at home with his narrative style, in which he views aspects of Indonesia through the eyes of a knowledgeable and experienced Westerner.

He has the knack of appealing to those in the know, as well as the totally uninitiated: Much of the detail that unfolds is like a light shining through a gauzy cultural veil, explaining why things are as they are in Bali in a way that will draw both nods of recognition from long-time expats and hold the interest of one-time and armchair tourists alike.

At times, the book contains passages that could have been drawn from an anthropological work of academic distinction, but which, nonetheless, are extremely accessible.

In Java, Allan writes, “a smile is the Swiss Army Knife of facial expressions, used to convey or mask emotion, to disarm, to mislead or to manipulate.”

Build-up of tension

The author will almost certainly win knowing smiles from the cognoscenti in the chapter titled Among the W***ers (rhymes with “bankers”). These expat denizens of Seminyak, which lies a few kilometers to the north of Kuta along the main drag, are nothing more than a bunch of “poseurs whose arrogance is matched only by their lack of any visible accomplishments”.

Nevertheless, they like to eat well, which accounts for the recent real-life explosion of eateries in the area, particularly along Jl. Laksmana, known colloquially as “eat street”.

One of the main characters, Ayu from Java, is quite endearing. Her life and background are set out in some considerable detail.

That she works as a prostitute in Bali to support members of her family back home will come as no surprise to those familiar with the harsh facts of life of Balinese tourism; it may be a real eye-opener for strangers to Paradise, though.

In a sense, the entire book is a lengthy exercise in scene-setting prior to a “reconstruction” of the moments leading up to the bombings. The unemotional, almost matter-of-fact way in which the bombings and their immediate aftermath are described somehow adds to their horror.

Some of the very precise details presented in the account of the bombers’ preparations and interactions with each other in the final few days, hours and minutes before detonation are clearly the product of the author’s surmise; he simply could not have known everything mentioned, but the results are plausible enough.

They also add effectively to the tension created in the final few chapters, in which the bombers’ preparations are described in italicized passages that are scattered within the main narrative, and appear with increasing frequency as the fateful moment approaches.

By a strange coincidence, I found myself reading these final chapters at the same time that a repeat of the National Geographic Channel’s program on the first Bali bombings from its Seconds from Disaster series was being shown. The first half of the program adopted a similar approach to Allan’s, describing how certain individuals’ lives were to be entwined, caught up in the catastrophe that ensued.

Somehow, though, the program seemed to be more effective in presenting the material in a way that triggered an immediate, gut-wrenching, emotional response; you really cared what happened to the characters highlighted.

If, in Bali Blues, the intention was to make the impact of the bombings strike home at the level of the individual, it was only partially successful, for I found myself almost indifferent to the fate of some of Allan’s characters, the aspects of whose lives had previously been described in some considerable detail.

One strength of the book, however, is the way in which it explains the apparent post-bombing indifference of the Balinese and their reluctance to wallow in sadness, despite the intensity of the tragedy.

“Balinese,” Allan writes, “consider the joyous affirmation of life to be an appropriate expression of respect for the dead.”

In the penultimate chapter, Allan ends on a upbeat note, describing the scene at the commemoration of the first anniversary of the 2002 bombings at Ground Zero: “The absolute silence as the mourners embraced each other recalled the first evening I stood on this spot, almost a year before. Then I heard the faint chirp of crickets emanating from one corner of the enclosure. Life had returned to the heart of Kuta.”

The initial version of the manuscript was completed before the second series of bombings, which occurred on Oct. 1, 2005.

The postscript, added after the second bombings, injects a note of bittersweet, gritty realism, much as does Andrew’s comment, which was quoted at the beginning of this review.

“Life in Bali is now a constant, often violent struggle against unseen forces seeking to destroy balance and harmony.

“All of us are now living in the Real Bali.”