Free Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer

were venerated on the island for the very Wordsworthian reason that they were recent arrivals from heaven, the closest thing on earth to messengers from the gods. Thus it was strictly forbidden for anyone to touch a child on his head, and until the age of three, every infant was carried on the shoulders of his elders so that he would not have to come in contact with the impure earth. Many of Bali’s most divine duties were entrusted only to virgins: a village that felt itself to be possessed would select two little girls, known as “heavenly nymphs,” to don white dresses and perform the
sanghyang
dance, casting out evil spirits as they moved together in a trance, swaying to the rhythm of an unheard music. These days, however, the signs outside the travel agencies in Kuta shouted: “Virgin Dance! Only $5 (U.S.)!”
    And though virgins might be the first victims to be sacrificed on the altar of tourism, others were sure to follow. Traditionally, the Balinese had always shunned the sea, believing it to be the hiding place of malefic spirits; today, however, the beach at Kuta was packed with local vendors and villagers in swimsuits who were more than willing to confront demons if it led to extra dollars. So too, one of the Gauguinesque beauties of Bali—celebrated by all its early visitors—had been the majestic unself-consciousness of the local women as they went about their daily tasks bare-breasted. But in turfing the natives out of Eden, the West had supplied them with a fig leaf. After a series of Western documentaries in the thirties had tried to sell the tropical garden as Toplessness Central, Balinese women had been forced to follow the example of prostitutes and cover themselves up. Yet even now, local vendors did a brisk business in portraits of natural maidens undressed. And these days, ironically, it was the Australian girls in Kuta who sought to get back to nature by shedding their tops (to the amusement of the young Balinese and the consternation of the old), while the local girls wrapped themselves up against the invasion of staring eyes. Decadence, perhaps, could be defined as nothing more than the artificial embrace of what once had been natural.
    YET STILL, NOW and then, Bali shone with a freshness newly minted. It had become a truism to call the island the “Morning of the World” but true the fact remained. For every morning,very early, while most of the foreign revelers were sleeping off the excesses of the night before, the island became herself once again. At daybreak, Bali took on the soft glow that bodies acquire in sleep, and the same sense of innocence inviolate.
    Down by the long-sighing sea, Kuta Beach was empty, save for a lone fishermen or two casting their nets in the early light. Wind chimes sang outside the cafés. The lanes were drowsy with a gentle quiet. And one day when I walked at dawn to the beach, I saw a procession of villagers, dressed in their finest silks, carrying a flower-wreathed tower, amid a host of gilded parasols, down to the misty sea.
    By 5:30, the sleepy lanes were already bright and latticed with light. Wrinkled old women walked through the dust with a queenly erectness, silks piled high atop their heads; soft-faced little girls, in spotless white shirts and burgundy skirts, skipped their way to school; teenage boys, shirtless brown bodies radiant with good health, finished the day’s washing under the sun. In the mornings, Bali felt like a world reborn.
    THUS I WENT back and forth, unable to decide whether paradise had been lost, or was losing, or could ever be regained. And my greatest problem with Bali was, finally, that it seemed too free of problems. In many respects, it struck me as too lazy, and too easy. A real paradise, I felt, could not just be entered; it had to be earned. A real paradise must exact a price, resist admission as much as it invited it. And a real paradise, like a god or a lover, must have an element of mystery about it; only the presence of