Death and tourism on the island of Bali – A true short story

by Ernest Macintyre

Bali, named by Trip Advisor as the world’s top destination in its Traveller’s Choice award, in January 2021, is the only Hindu-majority province in Indonesia, with 86.9% of the population being of this ancient Indian way of life and death commonly called religion. That is why a Balinese funeral, of rich or poor is conducted as a complex ritual of “theatrical” process by people who have to be paid as “performers.

I knew nothing of all this, when in 1990 with a few friends who had also migrated to Australia, we took a trip to relax and enjoy the famous pleasure resort of Bali.

We stayed at the Kuta Beach Hotel. One morning as I strolled around aimlessly in the main reception area, I happened to see a notice inside a glass fronted cupboard which immediately held my attention.It stated that on the next day there would be a funeral ceremony in the village area of close by Ubud. Tourists, for the payment of fifty American dollars each, would be incorporated into the funeral process. Arrangements were to be at the hotel reception desk.

I walked to the reception area and told the manager that I was interested. He called me into his office to explain this unusual offer to tourists. I reproduce from memory a reconstruction of what he said.

” You see , these funerals are in very poor families. They don’t have the money for what has to be done at a funeral. So, they even keep the bodies in some place, till they can collect the money for the religious ceremonies for the funeral, and the bodies start decaying. This is in an island that earns so much from tourism and the hotel business .So some hotel owners got this plan going. They knew that today’s tourists are very different from long ago. Those days they came from their cold countries just to soak in the sun, lying on our beaches, and drinking cool beer. Today’s tourists are not only younger but very interested to get to know about the country they are touring. The hotel managers thought the religious ceremonies of the funerals would attract tourists. You see sir, the religious ceremonies for the dead, cannot be avoided whether families are rich or poor. They have to be done for the blessings and the future lives of the dead. These sad ceremonies are performed by hired men and women, they have to be paid. They are acting, but they also have sympathy for the dead “.

My mind went back to the crying women at Negombo funerals with their elusive transition from acting to feeling.

“The plan has worked, even five or six tourists each paying fifty American dollars is more than enough for these poor families to have the funeral ceremonies”.

I interjected, “Do the tourists go also to the funerals of other families, richer people?”

“No. They will not allow tourists to take part, the poor have the tourists because they need them.”

“Are you saying that we would be intruders, if not for our money?”

“No, not at all. We have reports that the sensitive tourists who go to these poor funerals integrate so humanly that the families of the dead feel their joining to be a blessing “

“I will join tomorrow “, I decided. After I made my payment he said, ” There are a few things to tell you”

” The dead person is a middle-aged woman, whose husband had died many years earlier. She is survived by two young daughters.”

He said that a van organized by the hotel would arrive at 8.30 am the next morning. There would be the driver and an interpreter. There are six of you, Americans and British. I would be the only Asian.

We would be taken to a room in the hotel and there given a white cloth to wear over our western clothes. Also, a large white shirt without a collar to wear over our upper body. The interpreter will then make some small coloured marking on each forehead. This costume we cannot make compulsory, but so far, all tourists have agreed. Those tourists who want to partake in the funerals are today’s tourists who see death as part of the lives they are touring to experience.

“How does this interpreter work” I asked.

I was coming to that. The other five who will be your companions tomorrow morning, had been told that at the funeral they will be requested to just speak one or two lines in English. All the other five have agreed and the lines they will speak have already been sent to the interpreter, who is a Balinese graduate, in English, from University of Sydney. He will translate these to Bahasa Indonesia, and at the funeral after you speak, he will explain to the mourners in their language.

By doing this the tourists become a part of the mourning people.

For Asian tourists the tourist board have requested that the say their lines in their Asian language and tell the interpreter what it means, and he will convey it to the mourners.

This unnerved me. I was an Asian but a deeply colonized one. My ability with Sinhala and Tamil was colloquial and scanty.

I spent the rest of the morning in my room, working out what lines I would recite at the funeral, so that the hotel manager could send it to the interpreter with my English translation. I first thought of the Tamil ” Anndandu thorum alludu perandalum maandevar varuvaro?”, which roughly conveyed is ” You may cry and roll on the ground, but the dead will never come back” or a more sophisticated transformation , may be Hamlet’s “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns”

I abandoned this for it had depressing closure, it seemed to run against the openness of Hindu philosophy.After about an hour I settled on a simple line in Sinhala, which said enough and remained open as in Buddhism.

I went down and handed it to the office manager.The others in our Sri Lankan group had already made other arrangements, so I would not have their company at the funeral.

On the way back from the manager’s office, I met Aoife Maoilriain a young Irish woman, I had got to know in the hotel. She too was one of the other five who would be “touring” the funeral tomorrow. Aoife was a teacher at the University of Dublin. She was very keen and deeply interested about this unexpected part of tourism, she told me. And also sad she said, for she had planned to visit the village area around Ubud, and now she’ll be doing it in very different circumstances.

Tomorrow morning came. They were all in the van, clothed in the white native costumes and the markings on their foreheads. The interpreter, who now had studied all the words they would say, ready to convey to the Balinese mourners, greeted them. Soon they were at the funeral location. It was a small hut, with a compound in front. The benches and chairs for the congregation, which had been hired with the money from the six tourists, were in this compound. The two daughters sat separate from the other mourners, and in front of them a low platform on which their mother’s body lay, covered in white cloth. Only her face was visible. The folk priest started the proceedings.

The time came for the six tourists to offer their words. The first, John Hoskins, had adapted lines from John Donne’s old English poem.

“Each human’s death diminishes me,

Though a tourist I’m also mankind.Therefore, I do not ask to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for me.”

The interpreter explained to the congregation.

It was then my turn, and I made my one-line Sinhala offering. The Sinhala I knew was colloquial and very little, but I had been in the cast of Henry Jayasena’s

“Hunuwataya Kathawa” for seven years, before I migrated to Australia. I played the drunken priest who dominated a funeral scene, and had learnt, rote like, to speak lines from Sinhala literature. As if accomplished in Sinhala I delivered the line . The single short English line which the accomplished Jayasena had translated from ” The Caucasian Chalk Circle”.

” Maage dhayabara avamugal amuthani, minisunge irananame monatharang vividhakaravia hakidha, ekek marrie akige rudhria seelata wela, dhoo denna unusuma, watagena andanawa.”– “My dear funeral guests, how varied are the fates of humans, one laid down with her blood now cold, two daughters weeping, warmly, around her.”

The interpreter conveyed to the mourners, the openness of the short line, that invites ponder.

The last of our six tourist speakers was the Irish woman I mentioned earlier. I looked at Aoife Maoilriain just as she was about to give her offering. The woman was visibly in a state of great feeling, as she rose from her seat.

And then, we all gasped softly, as Aoife burst into song, singing the lines from the enduring Irish folk song ” Galway Bay” , which she had creatively adapted for this moment. In moving Celtic intonation she sang:

“And if there is going to be a life hereafter

And faith I know there’s going to be

I want by God, to meet this woman there

I just missed, on this island of Baalee.

We could see and feel that the whole congregation was transfixed, without knowing the meaning of the words. The power of music. As with ” Dhanno Budunge” sung with feeling, with people who don’t know any Sinhala. Though he did, the interpreter had no need to say in Bahasa Indonesia what the moving adaptation of the Irish song meant.

It was at this moment that I felt the hotel owners and the tourist board had made a far-seeing judgement. Today’s tourists are too varied to be singly classified as seeking ordinarily meant sensual pleasures .

We moved on with the congregation with various rituals on the way, till we reached the cremation site. The final ritual and the body was offered to the flames. The two daughters though composed were weeping profusely. The flames rose upwards bright and strong, in contrast to the two girls with bodies bent.

Soon we were back in our van, to the hotel. It was mostly silence all the way. Only the Irish woman Aoife spoke just as we came to our destination.

“Tomorrow the hotel has organized our beach carnival”, she reminded, speaking casually.