The Beast (Bali, 1998)

I was sitting sideways behind Made in my best yellow silk sarong and handmade lace kebaya when it became apparent that Made’s ancient beast just couldn’t make it up the hills leading to Pejeng. That motorcycle was 50 years old if it was a day. It was a miracle that nuts and bolts still held it together, but it was our only transportation to the night-time ceremony. When we reached a hill, the beast balked and sat down until I got off and tottered up the hill in my tightly wound sarong. We knew perfectly well at the time how ridiculous we looked in the twilight, me dismounting and hiking up the road between the rice fields to meet him and the bike at the top. We laughed everytime we reached a new hill and had to repeat this maneuver. That's when I started to fall for Made, because he wasn’t embarrassed, just amused. Before I knew much Balinese or Indonesian, I could always tell when he was retelling this story because I would hear the word “jalan-jalan” (literally “walking-walking”) and then everyone would turn to me,laugh good-naturedly and commiserate with me.