Life of the Bali

Not many visitors to Bali, even those who have escaped the fascinations of Kuta beach, can claim to have seen inside a Balinese household. The typical high walls to keep the evil spirits out, the stairs leading up to the front gates, and the unchained guard dog eying the street almost seem to contradict the welcoming reputation the Balinese are famed for.
A Balinese artist I met on the side of the road offered to show me where he lived ten minutes into our introduction. Once we passed through the front gates we emerged into an outside hallway of eight or ten rooms, all owned by Wayan’s family of aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and parents. I heard children splash somewhere in a bathtub as the older men crafted wood by the caged roosters raised for upcoming cockfights. Wayan’s aunt held out a box made of palm leaf she was making. I had seen a million of the offerings, burning with incense, on the floors of the markets. I turned it around for polite examination before I gave it back.
Wayan took me into a separate white building, with his paintings on the walls. They were of temples and lily ponds and naked women, in styles I had not seen before. I admired the detail gone into the brushing of the strokes with a light burning sensation in my chest. There was one of a woman being “prepared” for a temple ritual and I stared at her eyes and dark hair. I was in love. I didn’t blink, knowing the magic in his creative skill would fade with a realisation she was just lines and paint.
He bent down over an unfinished temple ceremony. He saw that I stared at a white woman in the bottom right corner. “A journalist,” he explained, as he shaped her camera.