The Good Women of Ubud

“Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams” – W.B.Yeats

This week’s column is dedicated to my late friend Bina and the good women of Ubud who I see every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at restaurants dancing the evening away alone or in groups, while the men watch from the sidelines. The throb of Jazz, Reggae, Rock and Salsa entrance the women who move to the music like birds in a mating ritual. Sometimes I feel the urge to join them but I am outnumbered ten to one by the heavenly bodies and the captivating fragrance of Chanel.

Today we shall not talk of that four letter word we encounter everyday – Love. Instead we shall put on our dancing shoes and waltz to Englebert Humperdinck’s song, Release Me, with a companion held close to our bosom like two swans in a partnership of a lifetime; although ours will last three and a half minutes, which is the duration of the song. But who cares, it is the beat of the moment that counts.

Growing up in the late 60s early 70s in a city that was the former capital of India, Calcutta, we were intoxicated by Pam Crain and Braz Gonzales who jazzed it up at a restaurant called Trinca’s on Park Street. Those were the days of the Fox Trot, Waltz and the Tag dance. Of course the Cha-Cha and Jive did get pride of place. Pond’s talcum powder was thrown on the floor to smoothen the surface so that we could twist to Chubby Checker in our nylon socks and pointed toe shoes and shorts that were so tight that they stuck in our rear.

As the years rolled on, the Doors and The Beatles opened us to a whole new world of bell-bottoms and floral shirts with collars the size of medieval contraptions. It was a time of free love, teenage pregnancy and good music. The Waltz then became the choice of fuddy duddies while we moved on to rock n roll. The girls in their midis, short tops and roman sandals were like Indian rubber men on the dance floor. The contortions could have displaced a few hips but this did not happen for they knew how to move to the music of the times. Then in the midst of the party in walked the crinkle tie-dye cotton skirts, long hair, faded jeans accompanied by the raucous sound of Janis Joplin and the wailing of Bob Dylan’s ‘Times they are a changin’. Peace descended in our hearts to the harmony of Simon and Garfunkle. The sound of silence was the music that stoked the fire in our hearts. We danced with complete abandon oblivious of the morrow that cried out for sanity as our lives flowed like a river in spate.

Many of us had fumbled on the dance floor or had been shy of moving to the beat or holding the hand of a damsel eager to accompany us in a ritual that invariably bordered on erotica. Unfortunately, some of us have carried this feeling through to adulthood.

I have often wondered as to why women dance to the spirit of the beat and are mesmerised by the vocal chords of songsters, Barry White and Joe Cocker. Could it be that they have tuned into the subtle nuances that lie hidden in the subterranean blues and these unravel their heartstrings?

Not too long ago I met Elizabeth, one of the good women of Ubud, who wanted to learn the salsa. A teacher would arrive at her hotel to guide her through the motions. As time passed she transformed herself into a creature of delight swaying to the tempo of a live band. She dressed in black and danced the night away. The tempo ignited her emotions and quelled the feeling of loneliness she carried within her. I sensed that the sound of feet tapping to the music could have been a balm that soothed her aching heart. But one will never know for she had tuned into a higher frequency of passion just like Bina who I had left behind in Calcutta.

The first time I met Bina was when I bumped into her on the dance floor while straining every sinew to Rod Stewart’s grating ‘ Tonight am yours’. Her long black hair and lithe body clothed in a white cotton dress soon became entwined with me, as the song changed to Leo Sayer’s ‘When I need love’. In those days we called it the Slow Dance: A perfect opportunity to agitate the pheromones. From that night on we were regulars at Jam Sessions where a live band played pop songs and tea and cucumber sandwiches were served. Over a period of six years we graduated from these evenings to nights at the disco dressed like members of the band – Abba, and onto rock concerts on Calangute beach in Goa on full moon nights. Sadly from the time I stopped dancing with her, for I had grown weary of music, she drifted away. One day I awoke to a good-bye letter placed under my door. I never saw her again. She passed away last year on Valentine’s Day after a prolonged illness.

The only regret that I have is not having danced with her one last time.

‘Come on baby light my fire’ is a haunting melody that plays through my head whenever I encounter the good women of Ubud for they remind me of follies past. In them is reflected a joie de vivre, a time of roses and poses that keeps them forever young, a touch of Gatsby in the hills. They, like Bina, possess a lust for living and a natural enchanting rhythm that entices onlookers like sirens in a Greek tragedy.

Ubud embraces a string of restaurants and a host of entertainment that never ceases to drive away the melancholia that sometimes grips the good women of Ubud who have arrived from far off lands and nested in the hills. A night out with Chika and her saxophone, moving to Michael Franti’s ‘Yes I will’ at Flava Lounge or swinging to salsa with the genteel crowd at Indus is reminiscent of evenings at Park Street’s hip restaurants and bars of the 70s; Trinca’s, Blue Fox, Mocambo’s, Moulin Rouge, the Barrel, Sky Room with live music and good food. Here in Ubud shades of those swinging years flash before my eyes like errant motorcyclists whizzing past unmindful of the near death experience they go through everyday.

From Calcutta to Ubud, the song remains the same.

“You can’t start a fire
You can’t start a fire without a spark
This gun’s for hire
Even if it were jus for dancing in the dark”
-Bruce Springsteen, Dancing in the Dark

To the good women of Ubud, I have one request…

Save the last dance for me.

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om

Dreamscapes of home in Paradise

Everyday is an endless dream of cigarettes and magazines
And each town looks the same to me,
The movies and the factories
And every stranger’s face I see reminds that I long to be
Homeward bound

I wish I was, homeward bound
Home, where my thoughts escaping
Home, where my music’s playing
Home, where my love lies waiting silently for me

Tonight I’ll sing my songs again
I’ll play the game and pretend
But all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony
I need someone to comfort me, homeward bound,
I wish I was, homeward bound

- Simon and Garfunkel, Homeward Bound

The further we travel away from home the closer we come to it. The dreams of home stoke the fires that burn in our hearts as we traverse the world.

Not a day goes by without paradise throwing up reflections of the home we left behind and with it only sweet memories of innocence, joy and togetherness.

Paradise is unrelenting in its pursuit of remembrances. We cannot escape the daily silhouettes of life that feed these memories with the help of paradoxes that shake us out of our stupor.

Sometime back a (late) friend spoke tearfully of how her brother was selling his house in New Zealand because of divorce proceedings. She spoke endearingly of the house as her home and the place where she got married. But what brought this sudden urge to remember? Was it the house in which she was living in Bali or her marriage that was slowly losing its passion? The sudden surge of angst can be placed firmly at the threshold of paradise – the prime meridian between the past and the present.

We are in a way imprisoned in paradise – doomed to relive our memories of home replete with all the beauty without the cruelty of reality. Amnesia has taken control of our senses and we enthusiastically accept this situation for none of us want to be reminded of the grief that we endured in the past; we only choose to select the bits and pieces of happiness out of convenience. It is an inbuilt survival mechanism generously given to all who arrive seeking to live another life in Bali.

Helen, an acquaintance of sorts who has temporarily set up home here, speaks incessantly of her children, boyfriend she left behind and the saga of a long lost marriage and subsequent divorce. It would appear that though she is living in paradise her thoughts are constantly of home.

The perception of home that we carry around with us is in essence a subterfuge that annuls all sense of proportion in relation to reality. We conjure up metaphors to convince ourselves of the viability of memories and its sidekick – a feeling of belonging to a world that exists within the parameters of our sub-conscious being.

Could it be that the dreamscape of home is actually the anchor that stabilises life wherever one resides?

The rapturous images of religious ceremonies, offerings, food and landscape ignite the fuse that we carry within us.

For instance, nothing is more reassuring than a comforting meal that reminds one of home, family, love and belonging in times of despair and loneliness. The lingering image of a bowl of steaming rice reminds me of my childhood in India amid the rice fields of Bengal and also the day when my infant son ate his first spoonful of curd and rice. But at the same time if I so desire I can recall the unhappiness and isolation that I felt. Fortunately this never happens for recollections of home are shrouded in a veil of make believe imagery that resembles Alice in Wonderland without the mad hatter in tow.

So what could be the life force that sustains and provokes us into remembering home in a manner that mocks the truth? And is our perception of home a figment of our magnified imagination – the amplified sights and sounds of paradise that intoxicate our senses and lures us into hallucinating of a home that in actuality never did exist.

One can only presume that dreamscapes in Bali are the food that nourishes the memories of our past that surfaces every so often.

On how many occasions have we arisen from deep slumber feeling elated or sad because the morning sun on our faces in paradise abruptly interrupted dreams of home?

On how many occasions have we awoken to the lingering taste of our favourite home cooked food on our lips?

Or, on how many occasions have we sat up in bed after a deep sleep and rested our naked feet on the floor only to be reminded with a sinking feeling of home; a place where as children we frolicked oblivious to the vagaries of daily life.

For some, awakening in paradise is like a bitter pill and for others a dreamscape that one retires to for comfort; the sugar coated pill of reality.

Though the illusions differ from person to person the esoteric dimension ensnares everyone who leaves home.

If home is where the heart is then our hearts are not in paradise. We are merely living out our lives in anticipation of returning home wherever that is. Invariably death plays the spoilsport for many who wait with deep longing for the cosiness of home and aromas of a mother’s cooking wafting from the kitchen.

The irony is that we are in great haste to leave home, to wander the world and taste the meaning of life. Yet as years flow by we nurture the memories of home and sadly imagine that we can return to a place and time that does not exist anymore in the realms of the universe.

For many of us in Bali, home will remain a cruel joke played on us by a Power that keeps urging us to live our illusions yet face the harsh paradoxes that confront and confound us everyday. There are some who have not played the game and returned home only to find that it had vanished into the past – in a dreamscape of home in paradise.

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om