THE PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN from Australia was intrigued by the magical-looking ring sparkling from the finger of the dark-skinned stranger who approached her in Ubud, the hill-top artists’ colony on the island of Bali.
“Can I see that ring?” she asked.
“Of course,” he replied, pulling it from his finger. “But beware. Anyone who tries on this ring will fall in love with me.”
Janet de Neefe, a 25-year-old traveller from Melbourne, laughed at the cheekiness of his answer, and took the ring.
Cue sparkly FX and tinkly music.
The young man, whose name was Ketut Suardana, turned out to be telling the truth. She started to feel the magic immediately. Love blossomed like a kembang kamboja or frangipani tree.
Twenty years later, Janet and Ketut are an institution in Ubud, and the parents of four stunning caramel-toned children. But the marriage of two folk from very different cultures has triggered the birth of many other cross-cultural offspring, including restaurants, a hotel, a fusion cooking school, a book and, ultimately, a literary festival.
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The Ubud Readers and Writers Festival is still young, just entering its fourth year---but right from its 2003 conception it became a favourite destination of authors in the region and the wider world. It’s no surprise that writers, who are people who have chosen solitary, sun-deprived career paths, jump at the invitation. Ubud is a classic Asian destination offering you the chance to sit under a palm tree with a view of holy Mount Agung, sipping a cocktail of freshly-picked fruit, while inhaling the aromas of your exotically spiced dinner being prepared. Life’s a bitch? Not here.
But there’s more to it than that. Ubud has always been an artists’ colony, and the addition of literature to the existing arts -- such as carving, painting, and performances of dance and shadow puppetry -- is a natural fit. The heart of the village is a long, serpentine road lined with art, antiques, garments, gift-shops, bookshops, a theatre and a temple, and there’s also a bustling, noisy market where you can join the locals in fighting over batik bargains. There is also a lush, botanical garden, and several museums, including a rather bizarre adults-only one which is based in the former home of a wealthy and sex-obsessed artist called Antonio Blanco, now deceased.
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During festival week, storytellers and poets, novelists and publishers, booklovers and writer-wannabees arrive in droves and feel like they’ve arrived in a sort of heaven for creative, pony-tailed types. And on the main strip you often see sweaty businessmen (newly arrived from the airport at Denpasar) feverishly stripping off their white shirts and rediscovering their inner hippies.
The movement towards artistry has also spread to the dinner table. Ubud has become the culinary capital of Bali, so it was only logical that the festival grew a programme of literary lunches and booklovers’ soirees, where body and mind can be fed at the same time.
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The 2007 festival, which ran from September 26 to 30, featured five days of talks, panel debates, poetry performances, workshops, movies, theatre, dance, music, and book launches. The main festival hub was the Indus restaurant, a glorious open-sided venue perched on the edge of a deep valley. Other events were at the super-luxury hotels that surround Ubud.
Founder Janet de Neefe is amazed at the reception the festival has had. Last year it was named “one of the world’s great book events” by Conde Nast Traveler and listed among the top six literary festivals in the world by Harper’s Bazaar.
“The beauty of the surroundings does have an amazing effect on people,” she laughed over a tangerine juice at Casa Luna, one of the restaurants she runs. “There was one author who wanted to go for a walk to clear his head before his session. He was so entranced by what he saw that he just kept on walking -- and completely missed the event at which he was booked to appear.”
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The event seems to generate stories as well as celebrate them. A young woman from the United States who turned up to help organize the festival ended up marrying a prince from the Balinese royal family.
Attendees frequently have unexpected adventures on their visit, as the present writer can attest. Before I flew in, an Indonesian newspaper printed the news that my family was associated with Mahatma Gandhi and that I was born on his birthday. I was promptly invited to make an official visit to the Gandhi School of Bali where I had to ceremonially eat a piece of divine chocolate cake in front of the assembled parents and children. It was one of the more offbeat authorial duties I’ve performed, but the chocolate cake was definitely divine.
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While highbrow literary events in Asia often come across as expatriate-dominated shindigs sitting uncomfortably on the surface of Asian settings, the Ubud festival is a deep-tissue mix of east and west. Many indigenous writers and artists are featured, some sessions are conducted in Bahasa Indonesian, and visiting authors can be provided with translators so they can speak to audiences who don’t speak English (such as in the sessions for local children). The theme for this year is Sekala-Niskala, which is Bahasa for “the seen and the unseen”, and the festival will open with a ceremonial event at the home of a Balinese Prince.
Yet the event is definitely international as well as local, and the honours list of past attendees includes luminaries such as Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Michael Ondaatje, William Dalrymple and Amitav Ghosh.
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One of the reasons why the event has been so successful can be found tucked within the covers of Janet’s book Fragrant Rice (HarperCollins, 2003). It is supposed to be a book about food, and the mixing of eastern and western flavours, but it is much more than that.
“You should definitely try mixing flavours in your kitchen,” she says with an enigmatic smile. “But you should also mix them in your life.”
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