Ubud Human Connections

On a back road near Sayan on Wednesday afternoon the rain was the kind that goes through a shirt in three seconds, and a woman on a scooter stopped, pulled a banana leaf out of the basket behind her and held it over my head for the fifty meters to the next shelter. She laughed the whole way. So did I. At the shelter she handed me the leaf, said, keep, and rode off in the rain, which she did not seem to notice. I still have the leaf. It has gone brown. I have not decided what it is for.

dharmaketut

Overheard on Jalan Raya Ubud in March, near the end of the rainy season, when a procession had stopped everything. A woman on the back of a scooter leaned toward the driver and said, "Relax, nobody is late today, the whole street is." He turned the engine off. They sat there like everyone else, a plastic bag of fruit between them. I have been here long enough to know what that jam means, and still not long enough to sit as calmly as they did.

In the morning, watch where you put your feet. Small offerings sit outside every doorway and on the pavement, and a lot of newcomers walk straight through them while looking at a phone. I step around, even if it makes my path longer. And when a ceremony procession is blocking Jalan Raya Ubud, do not honk. It is loud, it changes nothing, and the road clears when it clears. Allow ten minutes.

A frog the size of a dinner plate was sitting in the middle of the Campuhan Ridge Walk at dawn. Four of us walked up to it in single file and screamed in four different languages at exactly the same time. The frog did not move. A woman in a running vest said, he lives here, we are the guests. We all bowed a little and went around him. I have walked that path forty times since. He is there about half the time. I bow every time, even when he is not.

On a bench in the Sacred Monkey Forest on Sunday morning a macaque took the banana out of my bag before I had unpacked it. A man on the next bench laughed so hard that he had to take off his glasses. He offered me half of his own banana, which the macaque also took. We ended up with an empty bag between us and a long talk about our grandmothers. His made dumplings. Mine made trouble. We said goodbye at the gate and the macaque watched us leave.

What would you want to know first? It is a thin paperback with a cracked spine, a green cloth bookmark about halfway through, and pencil notes in the margins in small slanted writing. I lost it last Friday afternoon somewhere near Saraswati Temple, probably on a bench or a low wall. It matters because the notes are the only record of a long conversation I have been having with a friend, one margin at a time. I will check this board again on Sunday.

I was bargaining for a wooden bowl at the Ubud Traditional Art Market one Saturday morning, and getting very good at it, I thought. The seller looked at me, laughed, and said, take it, you are trying too hard, then gave me the price I had asked for, plus a small carved frog. I paid the full price anyway, which made her laugh harder. We split the difference. The frog sits on my shelf and watches me. It does not say anything. I think it is on her side.

It rained sideways on a Thursday afternoon in Penestanan while I was out, and my whole line of washing was in it. When I got home everything was folded on a chair on my porch, slightly damp, with a banana leaf on top. I counted my things and every one was there. I asked three neighbours and each said, not me, and smiled in a way I did not trust. I left a bag of rambutan on the same chair the next morning. It was gone by noon. I have not seen a single hand.

We passed three times on the Campuhan Ridge Walk at 6.15am, you walking out and me walking back, because I forgot my water, went to buy one, and returned. Each time you were holding a folded rain poncho and looking at the clouds like you were making a decision. On the third pass you said, still dry. I said, I know. The clouds kept their side of the deal. I kept wondering whether you ever put it on. I am walking the ridge tomorrow at 6.15 with a poncho of my own, in case we have to decide together.