Monsters rule the quiet time

While others flee the silence of Nyepi, Carolyn Parfitt finds it an excellent time to be in Ubud.

"SOMEONE forgot to tell the crowing roosters and cooing pigeons that today is the Day of Silence," I wrote in my diary while in Ubud. In the eerie hush of Nyepi, Bali's Hindu New Year's Day, their calls hung rudely in the air.

Leading up to this significant day of purification, we met other tourists heading to Lombok or other nearby Muslim regions in order to avoid it. But, having experienced Nyepi before, we're fond of it. Friends who live in Bali say it's their favourite day of the year.

OK, you have to stay in your hotel for the day, listening to the strange, rare silence of a Bali without motorbikes, tooting horns, construction work or recorded music, but the staff in many hotels and villas will make sure you don't starve. Where's the hardship in having nothing more to do for a day than reading and writing, snoozing and being fed? You can even take a dip in the pool if you're quiet.

Besides, it's worth being in Bali to see the preparations leading up to Nyepi. A frisson of excitement pervades the place as the people of the villages put the finishing touches on their "ogah-ogah", the giant papier-mache monsters that represent the evil spirits to be driven out of Bali by the ritual.

Wayan, the driver who took us from Padangbai to Ubud, said he had spent an hour or so each afternoon for the past month making ogah-ogah with his friends. Much discussion went into who would make the head or who would make the hands; then they sat together on a grassy patch and set to work, chatting all the while.

Whole villages participate in the preparations for Nyepi but making ogah ogah is mostly the province of the young men and boys. They fashion their monsters in the shape of characters from Hindu mythology as well as more contemporary images, sometimes adding flashing green lights for eyes. In A Short History of Bali: Indonesia's Hindu Realm, Robert Pringle reports that at the first Nyepi after the Kuta bombings (2002), an ogah-ogah representing one of the accused terrorists, Amrozi, made an appearance. "Perched on his shoulder was the demon-sorceress Rangda, goading him to do unspeakable things," Pringle wrote.

Balinese women spend the days leading up to Nyepi making offerings, shopping in the markets for food and preparing copious amounts of it ahead of time. No cooking is to be done on Nyepi; no fires or even cigarettes lit; no electricity switched on. Even the airport is closed. People are required to stay at home or in family compounds and the streets are monitored by wandering "pecalang" village wardens.