I Was A Gamelan Groupie

It was the summer of 2000, I was 25, and a gamelan groupie. I had just returned from six months of fieldwork in Bali Indonesia, where I had met the gong player for a gamelan orchestra. As fate would have it, the orchestra was making a trip to Vancouver at exactly the same time as I was on the west coast. So I joined them for a few days.

They were staying at student residences across from the Asian Studies Pavilion at UBC. There was an older man and his son, and his son's friend with them, along with an ethnomusicologist and orchestra leader and his wife.

One day during practise, I sat down next to the older man, who was also listening to the practice. We exchanged a few words, then I noticed his ring; a beautiful craggy gold piece set with a large star ruby. I pointed to my much more simple gold ring set with diamonds and a ruby and said , "Look! Twins!!" He smiled and asked me my name. He told me his name was Putra. {*Rana's reaction to me calling him Putra*}

Putra was about 55, barrel chested, large for an Indonesian. He showed all the signs of living the good life. He had an air of arrogance but was welcoming. He knew his place in he world! We became allies, if not friends.

He told me that he was the Raja of Ubud, the community that I had just been studying. I was a little stunned as I had heard nothing but negative things about his family from my primary informant. Putra liked me, so we spent time talking. He told me the history of tourism in Ubud from the perspective of the Royal Family. A much different story than the one I was given by my non-royal informants. He asked my opinion on where his family should be staying; with the orchestra in a slightly rundown old UBC residence within walking distance of the recital venue, or in a fancier, newer high rise residence on the other side of campus. He was worried about what it would look like if his family stayed in the same run down accommodations as his subjects in the orchestra. He was actively creating his own power. I was able to convince him that it would be better to be all together. And he could stay in the residence assistant's quarters, bigger and fancier.

Putra was a man who exuded entitlement and power, even if his subjects had poor opinions of him. He was a rich man in a third world country, which made him a very rich man. Power and entitlement hung off of him like cologne. And he was Balinese.

The thing one must understand about Balinese and the way tourism has shaped its culture, is that it has made a population that is worldly in a very skewed manner. They are not worldly from formal education or an unbiased media. They are worldly because they are constantly exposed to tourists from all over the world, and pick up bits and pieces about them in a random manner.

One of the games I would play with the Balinese, sitting on the side of the road in downtown Ubud, was "Find the Americans". The Balinese knew how to pick out where people were from by appearance alone. North Americans tend to be bigger than Europeans. Germans also stood out. By knowing where a tourist was from, and knowing a little bit about that place, the Balinese tourist operator could gain the confidence of the tourist, establish a rapport and some initial trust; enough to perhaps result In some business. The Balinese were astute anthropologists of tourist behaviour and culture; a knowledge that served them well.

But this knowledge, as I said, was skewed. For instance the Balinese thought westerners did not like to talk about their professions because people on vacation leave those formalities behind at customs. The Balinese I knew had no idea that "And what do you do?" Is one of the most common opening questions in a new conversation, that it is a key piece of information in placing one in the cultural milieu.

The Balinese are tourism worldly.

But back to UBC in the summer of 2000:

We spent a lot of time just hanging around the residences in between practices and performances. I did a little exploring and noticed a peculiar sight in a room in the Asian Studies Pavilion, just across from the orchestra's residences; a room with a wall of floor to ceiling windows. My eye caught on orangey reds and yellows; a familiar palate that I couldn't quite place. There were perhaps 200 people packed in to the room, sitting hip to hip, elbow to elbow on the floor facing an elevated dais framed by the same orangey red and yellow fabrics and flowers. It was like a shrine. Inside the shrine sat a man in robes and a headdress that I recognized as some sort of Asian religious garb. I was intrigued.

I found two kids, a brother and sister, hanging out outside of the room and befriended them. They were children of some of the people sitting on the floor in the intriguing room. I asked them what was going on, and they excitedly, proudly told me it was a Lama giving a talk. I cannot begin to explain how my stomach did flip flops. I have since researched this talk and discovered it was a six week workshop given by the Panchen Lama.

This is not a story with a strong punchline. It is something I witnessed, something that no one else knew was happening. The collision of two powerful "regimes", unknowingly. A comparison of forms of power. Globalization in motion.

It is as though the most powerful Saudi sheik bumped into the Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees at McDonalds.

Putra bustling with outward authority, entitlement, walking barrel chested with arms crooked swinging at his sides; his entourage, his heir, and his heir's friend and myself, the gamelan groupie.

The Panchen Lama, second only to the Dali Lama in the Tibetan hierarchy, comes through the double doors at the end of the covered walkway that we are walking towards.

____________________TIME SLOWS TO HEARTBEATS____________________

The Panchen Lama is not standing tall, and his retainers, draped in orangey reds and yellows, keep their heads lower than his. He walks slowly like he is taking in and addressing each Atom he meets. His retainers do the bustling, facing him walking sideways and stooped. It is clearly a procession of great dignity.

And Putra, reminding me of a pre-WWII American Industrialist, a Henry Ford, a Rockefeller, puffed up in his own power, walks briskly down the walkway towards the Lama. I cringe at the thought of these two powers colliding. Would the world explode! Would my world implode?

And then nothing happened. Putra walked between the lama's retainers and the lama like nobody noticed him. The two forms of power meshed into each other and passed through. The world didn't end. But I exploded inside. I was breathless. No one knew what had just happened, what I had just witnessed, there was no one with whom I could share. It was the most surreal moment of my life.

As I said, this story has no punchline, it is just something extraordinary that I witnessed. Over the years I have learned to be careful of who I tell this story to because most people don't get it. I like to use my whole body in telling the story, emphasizing the differences in the two leaders' physical presences. I have a hard time conveying that moment in a way that represents a world where technology made it possible for a King and a Lama to cross paths in a foreign land and each of them having no clue as to who the other is. Society hasn't caught up to its technological advances. Putra, as worldly as he was, did not have the general knowledge to know that this man in orangey red and yellow robes was his equal.