Oblation to status
Oka Rusmini's Earth Dance brought to mind the time of my early experiences in Southeast Asia when I had difficulty in understanding—let alone correctly acting in—a hierarchising social environment. During my first year, at the dignified Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, my teachers despaired whether they would ever succeed in instilling a modicum of appropriate language and manners in this blunt, egalitarian Dutchman. Of course, when being called up for military service, I was confronted with a system where a man is his rank, where he is a uniform with insignia. That lesson, however, didn't sink in; after six months, they sent me home. Ten years later, my Thai teachers tried to do a better job than the drill sergeants, and four years hence it was the turn of my Jogjanese mentors.... Reluctantly, I gradually learned that in Thai or Javanese social life a person is a rank, that rank obliges; one has to live up to it, and display it to boot. Deep down, one may be different and even disagree. That is a private affair that should not disturb the social show.[1]
Oka Rusmini's tale is set in Balinese society and dwells on the preoccupations of four generations of women who are hemmed in by caste, tradition, taboos and, naturally, by gender ideas. Through highlighting these limitations, and the escape routes of excelling in the gracefulness of dancing, of being beautiful, and of marrying a high-caste husband, Balinese realities come into sight that are far divorced from the overload of myths that colours the view of outsiders.
The possibilities of 'escaping' are very limited, and so many characters are goaded to resort to alternative ways of 'self'-expression, such as jealousy, backbiting, derision, intrigue, and even migration to the anonymity and freedom of life in the city.
In order to bring the story's main theme out in sharp relief, one of the main characters, highborn Telaga, pursues her dream of marrying her childhood love Wayan, a gifted painter and, much more important, a lowly commoner (sudra). This opens the gates of hell! Was her life already controlled by her mother's avarice, she now added the unrelenting bitterness of her mother-in-law and the greed of her sister-in-law. A noble woman marrying beneath her station is an insult to the good order, is breaking taboo, and inviting the wrath of super nature, which is confirmed by Wayan's death after only a few years of marriage. In order to prevent further disaster, Telaga is persuaded to still go through the ritual of exiting from her high status and of becoming a real sudra.
Next to this, we still find a sudra woman who was successful in marrying into a brahmana household which, consequently, opens the sluices of resentment at her very presence there. With these examples, the message becomes—for women as well as for men—that caste binds and divides, that hierarchy obliges and sets people apart.
Bali—a nice place? Touristy, spectacular, an Orientalist fantasy. Life onBali? Hidden from the foreign gaze, we are confronted with anything but an idyll. This is the merit of Oka Rusmini's insider story. As a—Jakarta-born (1967)—Balinese, she knows what she is writing about.
Earth Dance was first published in 2000; it earned the author a literary achievement award from the Department of Education. It was translated into English by Rani Amboyo and Thomas M. Hunter, and then commented upon in an Afterword by Pamela Allen. The present edition appeared in the Modern Library of Indonesia series of The Lontar Foundation. The book carries a well-thought-out Glossary, even as I would have appreciated glosses on the meaning of always recurring Balinese first names/titles, such asOka, Putu, Wayan, etc.
Niels Mulder has retired to the southern slope of the mystically potent Mt. Banáhaw, Philippines, where he stays in touch through <niels_mulder201935@yahoo.com.ph>.
[1] See "The Crux is the Skin; Reflections on Southeast-Asian Personhood", in Niels Mulder, Situating Filipino Civilisation in Southeast Asia; Reflections and observations. Saarbruecken: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing (print-to-order ed., ISBN 978-3-659-13083-0) 2012, ch. 4.