Bad intentions bad for m.., p.4
Gods and Demons, page 4
4
BALI HEALING
A few months after I settled in Bali in 2009, William Furney, my friend from The Bali Times, suggested I visit Pak (Mr) Dewa in Bedugul, the picturesque fruit and veg bowl at the island’s centre. Pak Dewa was a reflexologist and a dukun, or shaman, whom Furney, a fitness junkie in his thirties, consulted for his painful joints. Furney had a generous habit of suggesting ideas he deemed suitable for the Australian market.
So it was that I sought out Pak Dewa at Furney’s advice – not for his restorative therapies, but for the secrets he held about the Indonesian dictator Suharto, who died in 2008. Suharto, a devotee of Javanese mysticism, had been known to consult dukuns, meditate at sites of mystical power and collect pusaka (sacred heirlooms) throughout his life. He was thought to draw power from spiritualists’ advice. One of his Balinese dukuns was purportedly close to Pak Dewa. My mission was to extract an exposé on the pair’s confidences. This was my introduction to a country steeped in ancient mysticism, superstition and paranormal intrigue. The assignment was a long shot, and one that proved tricky.
Pak Dewa’s house was isolated, at the end of a nameless potholed track facing a lake. But he was obviously worth the trouble because Indonesians travelled from all corners of the archipelago, queuing before dawn to consult him.
Furney had organised my guide for the three-hour trip north of Seminyak. Who better than Pak Dewa’s nephew, Gusti? Small snag: Gusti, who’d enthusiastically agreed, overlooked the impending birth of his child. He phoned on the scheduled day to say his wife had just given birth. Next came Pak Putra; we were to travel on a motor scooter – until his wife forbade him from travelling with another woman on the back. The next contact refused point-blank to go near the dukun; he shuddered, saying he was afraid of black magic. Finally a practical bloke, who was moonlighting from his hotel job, stepped into the breach. He was a large man, perhaps a bouncer, and managed to find Pak Dewa’s place.
It was about 9 a.m. I queued with locals in the dirt courtyard where extended family wandered among scratching chickens, ducks, pigs and crowing roosters. No one seemed curious about the ‘tall’ bule (foreigner) among them – I was amused to find myself, at only 162.5 centimetres, towering above them. They were keenly guarding their places, and it was a long wait. My bored driver stood in the yard chain-smoking kreteks, Indonesia’s sweet clove cigarettes, simultaneously spitting.
In fact, we were in one of the most stunning rustic parts of Bali, in the unspoilt central highlands. This was the first time I had ventured outside the tourist zone, and the cooler higher-altitude climate was an exhilarating change. In the valley where I stood, mountain ranges soared above Pak Dewa’s house, adjoining the glassy Lake Beratan which lies beside the seventeenth-century Hindu-Buddhist water temple Pura Ulun Danu Bratan. So iconic is the temple it then graced Indonesia’s IDR50,000 banknotes.
The locals seemed apathetic towards the view. They patiently awaited therapy, at a fraction of a GP’s fee, to exorcise demons, equip themselves with black or white magic, or with susuk (talismans inserted beneath the skin for good luck) and alleviate pain with reflexology. Pak Dewa was a one-stop shop.
Finally it was my turn – by this time, my anticipation and the sun were high. Pak Dewa ushered me into his house. A wiry, short man of seventy-four, he had two front teeth missing and most of his black hair intact. He sported a sarong, singlet and a black leather bomber jacket. Adroitly avoiding questions about Suharto, he claimed he was ‘media-shy’. I asked for a reflexology treatment, hoping he might loosen up.
He led me into a tiny, stifling room and pulled crimson curtains across the windows to conceal us from outsiders pressing their faces to the grubby panes. Lie on the floor, he gestured, before targeting anatomical pressure points. Alarming flashes of agony swept through me as he poked and stabbed my feet and legs with a wooden reflexology stick, the pointy end resembling a freshly sharpened pencil. As a yelp escaped my lips, he upped the pressure and smiled beneficently, until I raised my hand in protest.
Next I submitted to tirtha (holy water) for spiritual wellness, my driver helping to translate. In one hand, Pak Dewa held a pale pink bougainvillea flower between thumb and forefinger; in the other, a half glass of water. He closed his eyes and recited a prayer while sprinkling the holy water over my head several times. He then dropped the flower into the water and told me to drink it to invoke the divine powers of the Hindu gods.
‘Is it tap water?’ I asked, wondering if it was sterile.
He replied with a sort of guffaw, my guide translating. ‘Don’t worry about the water quality; faith in the holy water is omnipotent.’ (For the record, I didn’t get sick.)
Till the end, Pak Dewa remained tight-lipped about Suharto’s secrets: it was a fait accompli.
William Furney had, of course, already tried to unlock the mystery of these conversations with Suharto. Confounded, he had sent me along for a second go. He was probably disappointed with the result, yet gave little away.
But the experience piqued my interest in shamanism – especially after several expats breathlessly told me of their own encounters.
*
Bali was, for years, the Coles supermarket of spiritual healers, dukuns, balians and soothsayers believed to possess occult powers.
For Indonesians, healers are essential in a prosaic and practical way, as Adrian Vickers points out in his 2012 book Bali: A Paradise Created, ‘Magic and exorcism are important topics on an island like Bali, where tropical diseases and a high infant mortality rate have been part of the basic experiences of people on all levels of society.’
After the 2006 publication of Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling romantic memoir Eat, Pray, Love and the 2010 film adaptation – partly set in Ubud’s spiritual mecca and starring Balinese healer Ketut Liyer – the Walmart version emerged. Tourist demand for transformative traditional healing surged, and Westerners swore by its emotional and physical powers manifested in trances and the spirit world.
But in the absence of regulations, questionable practices have mushroomed. It’s impossible to know how many healers operate in Bali. One estimate tips eight thousand, far exceeding the number of medical doctors – though Indonesian statistics of any kind are dubious.
Spiritual tourism is a godsend to healers who make a living from an ancient craft that traditionally caters to the poorest stratas of society. For locals unable to afford medical treatment, the healer deals with stigmatised conditions including cancer, leprosy and HIV/AIDS. A small donation is expected, to keep the healer fed; the meal of choice for most Indonesians is a rice and vegetable staple that costs about a dollar. I wonder if Westerners referencing Eat, Pray, Love expected too much for their buck.
At the height of spiritual mania following the release of the film, my Balinese friend Puspa took me to Tjokorda Gede Rai – a well-regarded balian – for a ‘check-up’. We visited him on the outskirts of Ubud. The patrician-looking, bearded healer was clad in the mangku’s (high priest’s) attire of pure white sarong and shirt. At seventy-eight, he was still handsome, tall and upright, with the high cheekbones and fine features typical of the Balinese. He had been a dukun for almost half his life, he declared proudly. Holding aloft heavy wooden scrolls ‘of wisdom’, he would consult one of two hundred for me, he said, gazing from rheumy yet gimlet eyes.
It was quiet; a couple of locals loitered. I lay down in an open-air wooden bale (hut) on a flaxen mat, and Tjokorda executed the sharp stick routine. ‘You have blocked energy on the left side,’ he told me, prodding to unblock my bad energy. Miraculously, back pain – from too many hours at the computer – subsided. He smiled. ‘Already the good energy is flowing.’
What of my spiritual concerns? The subtext seemed to be: was I another lovelorn, divorced Western woman seeking new love?
‘You are still young,’ he said convincingly. ‘Today your new life begins. You will have good luck in love and work.’ Yes, I definitely felt more energised, happier and younger, in that devil-may-care way – for about fifteen minutes.
I wonder how many shamans rode the wave after Elizabeth Gilbert schlepped from New York on her journey of self-discovery, enlightenment and love. The most prominent one was Ketut Liyer, elevated to his career apotheosis, ensuring his windfall. He even began to charge devotees in US dollars for consultations.
Foreigners have long been susceptible to the forces of Bali’s exalted magic and karma. Faced with fantastic stories and entranced Indonesians, I was intrigued. During my first months in Bali in 2009, out of curiosity I consulted dukuns and clairvoyants recommended by expats. But I found them to be mostly scam artists – and not very good ones.
Work was invariably the prism through which I gained insights into ingrained Hindu beliefs and rituals. When a fixer challenged a work-for-pay matter with me, spitting venom in a barrage of texts, it culminated in this: ‘I will cast a spell on you. I am Hindu. We believe in karma. You’ll see, you will get what you deserve.’ This went on for days, and it got quite nasty. I was intrigued it came from someone using facts as their stock-in-trade. The more I ignored it, the more inflammatory the rhetoric.
Thankfully, I wasn’t touched by the wrath of these curses – not that I am aware. But many expats told me they attributed misfortunes such as illnesses, accidents and thefts to curses from imagined enemies. Taking themselves off to the dukun for an exorcism was as common as a supermarket trip. Wellbeing restored, they were relieved, certainly of many rupiah.
How easy it is for charlatans to proliferate in this climate. In 2009 I read a warning from a disenchanted foreign woman in a Bali expat paper: ‘There are many charlatans out there who are happy to make empty promises that you will be healed … if you faithfully follow their instructions, and pay a large amount of money. There are other balians who are very charismatic and have convinced parents that their daughter[s] will be in good hands, while they blatantly abuse their power to do inappropriate things.’
You don’t have to be a young girl, as I found out in 2011 when I was touched up by a creepy old balian in Denpasar. There were no protective laws.
Bali authorities were quick to crack down on Western ‘alternative therapists’ exploiting cancer patients. But the humble balian was unassailable.
*
After my session with Tjokorda, an influx of foreigners arrived seeking his sage advice and healing hands. They crammed into the small bale. It was church-like silent, bar the odd reverential whisper.
He summoned an impatient middle-aged Swedish woman. ‘You have cured my stomach cancer,’ she said deferentially. ‘It’s completely gone. Thank you so much. I came to see you last year, and a few months later my cancer was gone. Do you remember me?’ He didn’t, but he betrayed no surprise. It seemed to me that Ketut Liyer was an insipid second to this dynamo.
Among those waiting were some in advanced stages of cancer. Desperately seeking spiritual panaceas, they told me they had renounced science-based Western medicine, believing it more toxic than therapeutic. Childlike, they sat in a circle on bamboo mats watching, in hushed thrall, the elderly Tjokorda diagnose and work on one prostrate ‘patient’ after another. He was standing in a type of pulpit. After each ‘patient’ was ‘cured’ and dismissed, they were so grateful they half-genuflected. It was a fairly stock procedure: a good poke around the head, toes, feet and internal organs with a reflexology stick revealed vulnerable pressure spots or health issues. Acute pain – identified when the ‘patient’ yelped – was said to be connected to a particular illness.
A Frenchwoman lay on the floor and waited while Tjokorda, deviating from the stick routine, gathered medicinal herbs from his garden to treat her blood ailment. He placed a bunch on her stomach, stuffed a lot more into her mouth and ordered her to chew, and placed the rest in a plastic bag for her to take home.
Then there was the wan elderly American man whose multiple Western operations and treatments had left him enervated and anxious. His wife, at first harried and upset, smiled gratefully as they left with a tiny plastic bag that contained the herbal medicine – they carried it as though it were gold bullion.
In every nook were tiny baskets with offerings to the gods. And money. Money stuffed into jars, offering bowls, under spiritual books, overflowing. Although I’d been told the healer didn’t take money, it is de rigueur to contribute. Most payments were at least IDR100,000 ($10), though many ‘patients’ gave up to IDR500,000. Where did the money go? Tjokorda apparently had no earthly use for it.
Among his admirers were three Western students hoping to glean healing skills. One was a Frenchwoman in her forties who’d arrived in Bali a few months previously with little hope as a mastectomy and chemotherapy had failed to eradicate her breast cancer. But she vowed the cancer had shrunk since she’d seen the healer. ‘It’s a miracle,’ said Puspa, who deeply believed in harmony and balance, clairvoyants, traditional healing and balians.
A group of French people had flown in from Paris especially to see the balian. Many wanted check-ups; others were in varying degrees of ill health. There was a keen sense of theatre, and I suspected Tjokorda found it thoroughly gratifying as he periodically sank into a chair to smoke a fag, surveying his minions while they waited for him to resume duties. When several more groups arrived and squeezed into the small space, it was overwhelming, the heat stifling. Tjokorda glanced at his prospective workload and disappeared into his garden.
On his return, he had a plan. He selected one person in each group. The atmosphere changed; people became testy, and a scuffle nearly broke out. Tjokorda, seeing it was about to get ugly, swiftly picked his patients. The rest slunk off, promising to return in the morning. I asked a young German student if she thought his popularity had grown since the Eat, Pray, Love hoopla. ‘Definitely,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Groups come every day. It’s big business. The hotels arrange drivers and ask people if they would like to see a healer.’
I learnt that Puspa – who donned many hats as a sometime journalist, translator and guide for French TV channels – arranged healer trips for large French groups. I met some during my own trips with Puspa. They would visit for a week, specifically for spiritual consultations. They were modern-day pilgrims seeking meaning in their suburban lives. Spiritual tourism filled a gap, Puspa said. It’s a microcosm of the island in which magic is not only tied to the tourist dollar but also to innate Indonesian mystical beliefs.
5
SLOW BURN
During my early Bali years, the only other island-based Australian journalist was Justin Hale. Then in his late thirties, he had been covering cut-and-thrust stories since 2002, including the Bali bombers’ trials, the Aceh tsunami, the Bali Nine trials and so on. Fluent in Bahasa Indonesia, Justin was a stringer for Australian commercial radio and TV outlets.
It was during my reporting of the Bali Nine appeal cases and other trials that we formed a friendship based on my ignorance of the Indonesian judicial system. Court seemed intimidating to me, the characters dour and oddly theatrical, their words laced with a degree of faux indignation. I imagined the menace reverberating through the Bali Nine. Equally vulnerable were their families, struggling to comprehend the catastrophic consequences pronounced on their children by prosecutors and judges in a language they didn’t understand in stifling, media-packed courtrooms. The trials could be just as opaque to journalists.
In the early days, if Justin didn’t show, I sometimes called him for help or relied on English-speaking lawyers. No matter how small the case, proceedings were excruciatingly protracted. By the time I emerged, editors were scrambling for copy. Once, Justin blithely suggested I pad out a story with the judge’s concluding summary: the offender had damaged Bali’s exemplary tourist reputation. ‘They always say that,’ he chirped. And so they did, and so journalists kept churning it out.
It wasn’t unusual for hearings to be delayed until after lunch or postponed for a week or more if one of the judiciary didn’t show. On good days, I’d nervously calculate how much time I had to write the story if the hearing finished by 3 p.m., while allowing for a three-hour time difference that would make it 6 p.m. in Sydney – pretty much on deadline. I would have about half an hour, so I usually wrote an outline in advance, fleshing it out later.
In time, I realised much of the judges’ marathon preambles were as arcane to me as they were to the most astute ears. Local reporters rushed for seats but paid little heed until later, unless it was a significant trial. The key was to have a good Indonesian fixer, which wasn’t easy in a small pool already snapped up before my arrival in Bali. Jakarta correspondents typically did three-year stints, and then their Bali fixers – like their contact books – seamlessly flowed to the next team. Unhelpfully, I was limited to employing fixers on a freelance basis – whenever I knew an important story was about to unfold. The fixer’s job of checking court schedules and alerting ‘bosses’ to stories was my responsibility. As my contacts grew through the years, and I eventually employed a steady fixer at my discretion, my situation became less problematic.
*
Bespectacled and fair-skinned, at 188 centimetres tall, Justin towered above the Indonesians, an advantage in a milieu of pushy local media. He had been in Indonesia so long he knew the foibles and strengths of a long line of Australian correspondents, and he enjoyed filling me in on Fairfax veterans such as Lindsay Murdoch and Mark Forbes. In my time, Matt Brown (ABC), Tom Allard (Fairfax) and Adam Gartrell (AAP) turned up to court from Jakarta with their fixers. Alone, I must have cut a slightly strange figure.
*
By 2010, when Bali Nine courier Scott Rush, the poster boy of the gang, prepared to lodge his final appeal against his death sentence, I’d gained confidence in deciphering the foibles of the Indonesian court system. I had interviewed Rush and his lawyers many times, and, occasionally, his anguished parents, though they were wary of the media. All the Bali Nine parents were paranoid their personal comments might adversely affect their child’s cases. This seemed wise, as there was often no logic to verdicts; sometimes journalists would check with one another that we didn’t mishear the prosecutor or the judge. Though parents tried to present a positive front, they were in an invidious position. Amid the turmoil, there was such strain and grief, it was painful to see.
