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September 16, 2014 edition

RADEN Adipati Aria Wiranatakusuma had to hold back feelings of revulsion to survive in that dirty shelter. An Arab child with an ear infection helped him prepare some food. With filthy hands, the child picked through some chicken, and he cleaned the plates with a cloth kept wrapped around his waist. That was just one part of Wiranatakusuma's experience at the haj pilgrimage quarantine facility on Kamaran Island, now part of Yemen.
"We have reached a country which does not yet understand the meaning and benefit of cleanliness against filth. I have to force myself to eat just a little," Wiranatakusuma, a former regent of Bandung, wrote in this diary. His words were later published as a series of articles in a Dutch-language newspaper in Bandung, Algemen Indisch Dagblad de Preangerbode, in 1925.

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August 12, 2014 edition

A bout 200 meters to the east of the Ubud Palace in Bali hangs a simple plaque that reads, "Rumah Pelukis dan Pematung I Gusti Nyoman Lempad" (Home of the Painter and Sculptor I Gusti Nyoman Lempad). As is common in traditional Balinese houses, the Lempad residential complex is situated on a plot of about 800 square meters and consists of several structures. In the center is the Bale Dangin, frequently used for religious ceremonies. Then there is the Gedong Rata, the place where Lempad used to work. There are also family buildings, a puri and a building that faces the main road which the family rents out as a shophouse.
This complex, lush with foliage from frangipani and other flowers and plants, is where maestro Lempad spent his days until his death on April 25, 1978, at the age of 116. Lempad passed away on a morning when he had asked his daughter, I Gusti Putu Oka, to bathe him. After the bath, he asked whether the sun had already risen. Then he went back to sleep. It was in that slumber when he took his final breath. The death of Lempad and his ngaben ceremony, or grand cremation, were preserved for eternity in the documentary Lempad of Bali by Australian directors John Darling and Lorne Blair.

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