Stories from the spice islands

June is the month when farmers at Ngawen village, Gunung Kidul, Yogyakarta, reap the grain of their work on paddy fields and all villagers gather in a celebration night of a puppet show.

“Sit next to me, you’ll have better view!” Pak Kades, the village chief, advised me while I was trying to find a space on pandanus mats spread on the front lawn of his house. He was exceptionally cheerful to host the most-anticipated shadow puppet show on that particularly moist and warm mid-June evening.

Everyone was there: fathers, mothers, children, teenagers, grandparents. Girls came giggling and boys swarmed into a corner in sarong. All oil lamps were lit. Wafts of burned incense pervaded the already-heavy air; the flock grew quiet. A row of shadow puppets stood on the left and right sides of a piece of banana stem: the stage. Its cloth screen flapped mildly to occasional winds, rendering the puppets’ shade waggled.

A puppet master’s voice broke to reveal the opening scene. Sound of gamelan, the musical instrument, was reverberant. Song of sinden, the singers, was lulling. The audiences were transfixed, as though in a full suspense of what would happen next. Only intermittent cough and cry of babies distracted the trance. The puppet master’s hands moved amazingly swift from one character to the other. He talked endlessly, as if never caught his breath. I was stunned by his skill to play different movements at a time. His voice, his personality and his words changed according to the puppets in action. There were jokes and puns filled the night with laughter. There were war and romance loaded the spectators with emotions.

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Late after midnight, the puppet master’s story had come alive in everybody’s mind. The full moon looked brighter and the breeze was cooler as a limestone hill behind the village was then almost visible.

“How lucky we are, living in this beautiful country,” the puppet master sang, “where stick, stone and wood become food and the sea is brimming with fish,”

That was how the play ended.

“Thank you. How I love the harvest party!” I greeted the puppet master goodnight.

“There is no harvest this time,” he replied, “The draught is too long and our crop fails. But next season will be better. We will be the granary of Java,”

His eyes flicked in the dimming lamplight when he packed his puppets humming. I turned to look at men chatting away to the dawn. The smell of coffee and cigarette thickened the air, yet their faces were glowing with hope.