Bali Books – witches, a travelling doctor & many changes
Saturday, 26 April 2025My recent Bali retreat mainly circled around travel writers and their Bali-related books, including Bill Dalton’s classic Indonesia Handbook and my own South-East Asia on a Shoestring, but other authors also featured.
◄ The Painted Alphabet – A mythical story of Bali (Editions Didier Millet)
Born in the USA, but a long term Bali resident, Diana Darling’s The Painted Alphabet is a novel based on a classic Balinese epic poem Dukuh Siladri. First published in 1992 – and reviewed as Demons: Dangerous When Annoyed in the New York Times at that time – it’s an easily read and enlightening little introduction to Balinese spirituality and wisdom, seamlessly blended with the modern world. Tourists cruise by in their air-con buses and the evil witch Dayu Datu is prone to remodelling her witch-haven, sometimes as a crack house, sometimes as a Soviet era airport lounge.
Siladri decided to abandon his village of Mameling (somewhere in the south of Bali) and trek into the mountains to seek wisdom from the sage Mpu Dibiaja, accompanied by his wife who sadly dies before they reach their destination. They left their baby son Mudita behind in Mameling, but took their niece Kusuma Sari instead, quite why they swopped the babies is unclear.
Years later Siladri falls into a cataclysmic dispute with Dayu Datu who despatches trainee witch Klinyar to the mountains. She may be able to change colours with her moods like a chameleon, burnt orange like an American president when she’s in a bad mood, but her evil magic is no match for Kusuma Sari’s pure skills. The grown-up Mudita also turns up in the mountains, falls passionately in love with Kusuma Sari, there’s sex of course, but apart from dealing with Klinyar and Dayu Datu they also have to battle with a disgusting playboy-prince Wayan Bular before things are finally sorted out.
◄ The World Odyssey of a Balinese Prince (Tuttle Publishing)
Idanna Pucci is another long term foreign resident, the Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci is her uncle and she’s working on a book about him, his life rather than his life in fashion which has already been covered. Idanna’s 1985 book Bhima Swarga: The Balinese Journey of the Soul, is a major coffee table book about the art work of the Kertha Gosa pavilion in Klungkung. Hans Hofer did the photography.
The World Odyssey of a Balinese Prince traces the story of noble-born Made Djelantik who left Bali to train as a doctor in the Netherlands and then led a most interesting medical life with the World Health Organization which took him everywhere from Sudan to Iraq to Afghanistan.
His book is illustrated with his delightful naïve paintings of his travel. Sadly the tale concludes with Bali going downhill of late, overpowered by too much tourism, too much greed and, of course, the terrorist attack – the Islamist Wahhabi terrorist attack – at Kuta Beach in 2002
Ms Pucci is a most interesting woman who has also written on Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, whose history I bumped into in Congo Brazzaville in 2011. She’s also married to Terry Ward who has lived in Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as Bali, and is the author of The Wahhabi Code: How the Saudis Spread Extremism Globally, well there is a topic.
◄ Bali, 50 Years of Changes (Glass House Books)
Also taking part in the Bali gathering were two more long term residents. Jean Couteau first arrived in Bali in 1972, the same year Maureen and I made our first short visit. Jean has stayed on and his conversation with Eric Buvelot forms Bali, 50 Years of Changes, tracking just how much the island has altered over that half century.
