Nyepi in Bali

Nyepi (Day of Silence) is a day celebrated mainly by the Balinese. This year is the first time of my 29 years of life which I have spent really experiencing a Nyepi day for real! As I mentioned, most of us know the meaning of the word Nyepi, but we have never thought that Balinese takes this day very literally and seriously and that’s so much respect for that!

The night before the Nyepi, there is a kind of parade going on around the street of Bali. You will experience a little interesting performance and a lot of traffic jam. During the parade, they were pushing carriage with ogoh-ogoh (symbolize the monster / evil spirits) on top, in which, from time to time, would be carried on the shoulder and sort of made the ogoh-ogoh came to life in the movement that they created.  

What amazed me was the durability of the ogoh-ogoh. I heard that they are made out of bamboo and processed paper and when you see how uniquely they are shaped and how strong the waving movement made by the carrier, you too will go “wow… they are still intact?” That moment, for me, I know how much time they must have spent in preparing that. Or another sign that we can look for is the proud expression of the people who push and carry them that show you this once a year event is important.

We didn’t spend too much time on the road, the heat (even it was already night time) and the traffic jam just made it impossible to stay on the street too long. I am a happy girl, witnessing that for short 30 minutes are good enough for me. J

Move on to the D Day. My dearest partner had kept on emphasizing on how we should stock up some food for the day. I was a planner, so I did so, not knowing how serious it is. But I believe there will be people who might still take it lightly and I can't imagine how they will spend their day with 3 meals on instant noodle, IF they have them in stock. The day before, I prepared 2 days amount of food, so that on the day itself, I could just heat them up and didn’t have to do the real cooking that sometimes can be noisy. I even bought super giant candle, the only type that I could found in the nearby groceries store (we didn’t use it at the end, because when we tested it out the night before, the light from the candle was visible from outside, and that might invite the visit from the Pecalang who were the only group of people who were allowed to roam around the street on that day to make sure everyone follows the rule!)

So food was good. We had enough to get by. It was quite a boring day though, because you know that you are not allowed to go out. You didn’t stay in by choice that created even more temptation to actually want to do something outside, as restricted. But we were good residents, so we stayed in and suppressed that boredom. That night, the sky was beautiful. The only ray of light that you can see came from the sky, the moon and the star. One day when I have a house with a good rooftop, maybe I would like to lay down and count stars during Nyepi. They were just so clear. No interference from our manmade light that lights up the city for the rest of 365 days this year. However, I must admit that when I peeked out of the window to check out on the opposite unit who didn’t exactly follow the rule and had been visited twice or thrice by the Pecalang, the darkness outside scared me. To my ear the quiet moment were soothing and at the same time foreign. We would not have that til next year.

So, that was my first Nyepi in Bali.