Baru di Bali

As if the island hasn’t had enough parties already, the culturally rich Bali is currently at a busy time preparing yet another festivity. And this time, it’s island-wide! The huge festivity is very fascinating, especially since it’ll be like the famed Venice’s Carnivale, but only with the members of Adam’s Family and Disney-Pixar’s scary, oh-so-not-cute troupes of Monsters Inc. altogether stacking up the roads as the participants. Yep, the roads of Bali will be flooded by, if we use the reversed term applied at the Barbie Doll factory, anatomically incorrect creatures this March 15. The festivity is called the Ogoh-ogoh Parade.

Ogoh-ogoh is a term used to refer to giant monster dolls that take form of demon characters as the symbol of evil, locally known as bhuta. Each banjar (smallest community unit) across Bali will need to make at least one ogoh-ogoh that will be competing with monsters from other banjars.  The event will be something like the Miss Universe pageant, but the opposite! That’s right; brain, beauty and behavior are certainly not the issue in this pageant. In fact, the uglier and scarier the ogoh-ogoh is, the more chance it has to be crowned as Miss (and/or Mister) Evil who deserves nothing but flames of inferno. No, we’re not being hateful or cynical whatsoever. Read on.

Of course, the demon shapes of ogoh-ogoh have a purpose. Approximately an hour before the parade takes place, with the ogoh-ogoh already lined-up on the road, each household of the Balinese Hindus in the island will make loud, disturbing sounds. People will be powerfully hitting small bamboo poles, frying pans and many others, including Aqua gallons, while circling their home compounds. This act, which is called pengerupukan, is performed to get rid of the evil spirits dwelling in people’s homes…before finally entering the ogoh-ogoh! Yep, that’s the scary part. Because when this happens, the ogoh-ogoh is no longer a skillfully-shaped, colorful, mere sculpture, but its evil look has also gained an evil soul.  

The fact that the ogoh-ogoh has actually been ‘enlivened’ will not affect common people with no special ‘ability’. On the other hand, watching the parade will be like a living nightmare for those with the ability to ‘see things’ – most of the time, this group of people also includes children. This is because the ogoh-ogoh will dance in firm yet scary gestures and sharply point its eyes here and there as if it’s targeting or preying on one of the spectators. You can probably imagine the horror from watching all kinds of evil marching down the road right before your eyes.

Fifi, a mother of a five-year-old daughter and a resident of Griya Anyar in South Denpasar, said that her daughter suffered from severe fever after watching the ogoh-ogoh parade in 2008 and 2009. “I really had no idea what was going on with my daughter then. Because I could still clearly remember that my daughter was very okay before we headed on to the road to watch the parade,” she said, adding that she learned that her daughter might be affected by the ogoh-ogoh after she consulted with a balian (Balinese healer) in 2009. “My daughter was gibbering “Mama, it’s staring at me” all the time. It made me really nervous, you know. So I’m just going to skip this year’s parade.”  

Yet, being soulful only takes a little portion from the larger evil department of ogoh-ogoh. It is believed that, when finishing the whole monstrous doll, putting and/or attaching the head should be done very, very lastly. “It’s like a bad omen, you know, if the head is put before the rest of the parts are completed,” Kadek Ariana from Banjar Glogor Carik told The Mag. “Bad things such as tragic accidents will happen if we put the head first.”

The parade normally starts before sunset. And as you might’ve guessed, the roads of Bali will be seriously packed both with people waiting for the parade to start and vehicles trying to pass through. Live gamelan instrument tunes will normally break the chatterers, marking that the parade is about to start. With at least ten men carrying one giant ogoh-ogoh that sits on a square wooden/bamboo platform, it could be dangerous at times to watch the parade from a close distance – especially when the men do some maneuvers and all to spin the ogoh-ogoh. The ogoh-ogoh will be brought to the ocean and get burnt there as a symbol of exorcism, that is to get rid of the evil spirits. However, in non-coastal areas, the ogoh-ogoh is burnt at a cemetery ground.  

Some of the most beautifully-crafted ogoh-ogohs will be paraded in Puputan Square, downtown of Denpasar, after sunset. If you’re planning to visit this area during that time, make sure to build in enough time as heavy traffic will definitely cause delays. Oh, don’t forget to bring along your camera!