Nyoman Lara

I really only noticed Nyoman Lara when I climbed into the front seat, after we’d dropped Luca at the airport and the Russian couple in Kuta. It was just me and him in the van now, with an hour’s drive ahead of us.

I actually didn’t feel that much like talking. These were the first minutes of my aloneness on this solo journey. For five weeks, first Dejana and then Luca had kept me company. Now a new phase of my trip was beginning, the one I had envisioned. But I knew it would be a while before I eased into it; a while before alone wasn’t a feeling of missing something.

Maybe I needed to fill the space, so hesitantly I began. As he answered my questions, Nyoman Lara became the first Balinese to break down the wall between tourist and friend.

It was the story of his wife that did it. Things weren’t okay at home, he told me.

“My wife, she is depressed,” he said.

Depressed? He knows what depression is?

After the Bali Bombings in 2002, Nyoman Lara lost his job at a Kuta hotel. It was a good job, and his wife and three children had been above water. In the years after, they had all struggled. Nyoman began working long hours as a taxi driver just to afford food and school supplies.

In the past two years, the price of rice tripled, while his salary stayed the same, and become more unstable.

Then Nyoman’s wife began to experience mood swings. She wore her deep frustration in private and in public, and was despondent, bitter. She felt Nyoman was responsible.

“She is angry all the time,” he says with a gentle Balinese smile, not complaining. “I come home late, and she yells at me.”

“What does she want?” I ask.

“She wants a divorce.”

Not the answer I was expecting. Just a few years ago, divorce was a dangerous taboo in Bali. One with serious consequences in the traditional family compounds in which husband and wife live, together with several other generations, and a few dozen chickens.

I proceed carefully... “And what do you want?”

“If she was healthy, I would say... pause, sigh ... 'okay'. You want divorce? I want you to have what you want. I want you happy,” he says with resignation, with love, even. “But... she is sick. My wife, she is sick. Maybe she doesn’t understand. Maybe, she needs me..."

the red lotus, a symbol of Compassion

When Nyoman dropped me at home, I couldn’t help but hug him.

Maybe she does need him, maybe she doesn't. But I did feel that Nyoman was a man who wanted to do the right thing; and that he in past six years he had spent much less time than me thinking about his own feelings.

Good luck Nyoman. I hope your happy nature and your kindness bring you the love you deserve soon.