Vikas Swarup, author of Q&A (a.k.a. Slumdog Millionaire) and Six Suspects, is set to appear at the 2009 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.

Q. Your appearance at the festival next week is much anticipated, we’re looking forward to seeing you here. Will this be your first visit to Bali?
A. Absolutely. I am very much looking forward to the visit, having heard so much about the fabled beauty of Bali.

Q. You were inspired to start writing your debut novel, Q&A, while living in London. What was it that prompted you? Had you always felt that you had a novel or several lurking inside you?
A. I am an ‘accidental’ writer. I used to write in my school days and even won some creative writing contests. But I never thought I would be a novelist and did not write a word of fiction for almost fifteen years. It was only when I was posted in London that I got inspired to try my hand at fiction, motivated by some of my contemporaries in the Foreign Service who had written novels, and by the city of London itself, which is such a vibrant cultural hub.

Q. On a practical note, how did you find the time and keep the motivation to finish Q&A in two months, given that you didn’t share what you were doing with family and friends, while also keeping your career as a diplomat on track?
A. The plot of the novel was fully formed in my head. I just had to write it down (or, type it on my computer). Since I was in a busy day job, I used the evenings of the weekdays to do my research, and on weekends and holidays I wrote, even managing 20,000 words on one occasion.

Q. You were born into a family of lawyers in Allahabad. Can you remember when you first saw a slum, or became aware of the extremes of poverty and wealth that exist in India? Did you ever encounter kids like Ram Mohammad Thomas and his brother?
A. No one in India leads a hermetically sealed life. The rich and poor live constantly intersecting lives. The gap of income and wealth is something you become aware of very early on. Not only did I visit slum areas, I had several friends from there with whom I played cricket. You can encounter boys like Ram Mohammad Thomas every day in India.

Q. When writing the novel, did you have any sense of the immense reaction it might receive? Did you already envision it as a movie? At one point, it seemed that it might be made into a Bollywood film, do you think this is still a possibility?
A. I knew that I was on to a good thing, that the plot was new and it was a unique way of telling a story. But never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that it would get translated into 42 languages and become an Oscar-winning film. If at all I visualised it as a film, I thought it would be a Bollywood film and that film would probably also have been set in Dharavi but you could bet your bottom dollar there would have been a couple of dream song sequences set in Switzerland!

Q. When the film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was released in India, some were upset and offended by it – why do you think this was? Did you experience any reactions like this with the release of the book?
A. I think people were upset by what they thought was an overemphasis on the poverty and slums of India. Fortunately the canvas of my book was much wider than simply Dharavi and I did not encounter any negative reactions with the book.

Q. The book is a story about the possibilities that are within all of us, and how lives can go through dramatic transformations – in a way this is mirrored by the story behind the book; you were an unknown author, as yet unpublished in India, and you wrote in two months a debut novel that has been picked up by publishers all over the world and made into a blockbuster Oscar-winning movie, you hang out with people like Oprah and already have a second novel set to be filmed… Do you believe in luck? Destiny? Hard work?
A. I believe there is no shortcut to success. You have to put in hard work, but then you also need that little bit of luck to carry you all the way. I don’t believe in destiny as something foreordained. Basically you create your own luck.

Q. Your follow-up novel, ‘Six Suspects’, is structured as a thrilling whodunnit. Your young son read the ending, and then threatened to give the game away on Facebook – did he follow through on this? Was there a big payoff?
A. Teenagers are very persistent. I had to give him an MP3 player to buy his silence!

Q. Do you foresee that writing may one day become a full time job, or are you still very much committed to your work with the Indian Foreign Service? Is there a gripping novel about Indian diplomats somewhere in the pipeline?
A. I love my job and take great pride in representing my country especially at a time when India is the flavour of the world. Having a day job means that I can write only in my spare time. But having the security of the day job makes it easier for me to write. I don’t think readers will be interested in a diplomat’s real life trivia. I’d much rather entertain them with fiction!

Vikas Swarup appears at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, October 7th-11th 2009. For complete programme details, visit www.ubudwritersfestival.com.

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Ubud Writers and Readers Festival founder, Janet De Neefe.

Kabar asked festival founder/director Janet De Neefe what she’s particularly looking forward to this year: here she recommends her top 5 things to see at the festival.

“1. Wole Soyinka – a senior statesman of global literature and the first Black African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Be inspired.

2. the annual poetry slam – this year we have some of the world’s best performance poets, so hang on to your hats. Features the winner of 2008 Australian National Poetry Slam, Omar Musa. Be entertained.

3. Literary Lunches – the most divine venues Ubud has to offer with a glittering cast of international and Indonesian speakers. ‘Dangerous Women’ will feature some of the strongest female literary stars of 2009 and Wole Soyinka with Hari Kunzru at the Four Seasons is guaranteed to knock your socks off! Be enthralled.

4. Tribute to WS Rendra – join us in celebrating the life, works and legacy of the ‘peacock’ of Indonesian literature. Be moved.

5. Out of the eighteen workshops available, I’d love to do the ‘Introduction to Screenwriting’ with UK screenwriter Asitha Ameresekere. He’s planning to show some scenes from films and distribute scripted scenes to show what happens in the transfer from page to screen.”

Each year throws up interesting authors that many attendees either haven’t heard of before or haven’t got around to reading yet. This year, Kabar asked the UWRF team which books you should read before the festival. Here are their top 10 suggestions:

1. Wole Soyinka’s ‘Poems from Prison’
2. Lloyd Jones’ ‘Mr Pip‘
3. Julia Leigh’s ‘Disquiet‘
4. Tom Cho’s ‘Look Who’s Morphing’
5. Hari Kunzru’s ‘My Revolutions‘
6 Neel Murkherjee’s ‘Past Continuous’
7. Vikas Swarup’s ‘Six Suspects‘, ‘Q&A‘
8. Seno Gumira Ajidarma’s ‘Eyewitness’
9. Bejan Matur’s ‘In the Temple of a Patient God‘
10. Mohammad Hanif’s ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes‘

For the full program and schedule of the 2009 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, visit www.ubudwritersfestival.com

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Producer Steven Starr speaking at the screening of FLOW at the ARMA Resort, Ubud.

Bali’s Green School (www.greenschool.org) organised a screening of the award-winning documentary FLOW (For Love Of Water). Intense and provoking, the film explores aspects of the global water crisis, from polluted tap water and contaminated bottled water in the US to the privatisation of water services in developing countries, which often excludes the poorest from access to clean water.

Producer Steven Starr has been working with students of the Green School over the past week, and described how impressed he was by the “enthusiasm for life” he found on the campus. In March, a group of Green School students travelled to the Global Issues Conference for EARCOS (East Asia Regional Council of Schools) to present their research on water issues in Bali. This ongoing work is set to become the basis for a documentary film on the subject later this year.

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Dede Suryana

Mengejar Ombak, the documentary about Dede Suryana, a young surfer from a West Java village who became an international star, has just won two awards at X-Dance Film Festival in Salt Lake City, a sports documentary festival that runs in conjunction with Sundance Film Festival.

Big congratulations to Jakarta-based director Dave Arnold – this has been a labour of love many years in the making, and all the hard work has resulted in an excellent and thoughtful film that explores the journey of a very special kampung kid thrust into the international surfing spotlight.

Click here to view the trailer and read the article about the film that Dave wrote for Kabar back in 2007. Premieres are planned soon for several locations in Indonesia – we’ll keep you posted!

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‘Nausicaa’ suite

It starts out as an aimless drive, undertaken purely for the pleasure of being out and about on rural Bali roads on a clear blue afternoon. One glimpse of the sign, however, and the day has a new sense of purpose. It is discreet, simple, a smallish slab of wood engraved with a Kanji character that, we later discover, represents Michi: a Taoist word denoting ‘the Journey and ultimately the Way towards one’s Great Integrity.’

Little knowing what awaits, but happily idle and intrigued, we look at each other, reverse, and take the turn that will lead us through Jukut Paku village, past a magnificent banyan tree and down to the Michi Retreat.

Once there, we are confronted by a mosaic marvel. Gaudi in Bali? The restaurant dazzles with its playful mobiles and claw-footed, mirror-studded pillars. Across the valley, distant figures are discernable in the lush padi, where a terrace of intense green drops down to the rushing river below.

View of pool and valley.

The Founder – who, with a combination of modesty and mystique, does not wish to be named – appears shortly after our arrival. A former professor of cultural anthropology, he is in his late seventies and walks with the aid of a silver-capped stick, his canine companion Bubu by his side. While he consults with staff, someone presents a brochure.

Towards the back of the booklet is a page entitled ‘The Tale of a Nomad: Freedom from the Spurious and the Specious.’

The Tale reads as follows:
Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was a thunderclap to an infant living near the Russian border of inner Mongolia. After seven decades of a peripatetic existence, the founder was able to unearth a strip of the land in Ubud, an art & craft center of Bali. The place was a providential “Canaan” for him…

The Founder approaches us, then listens appreciatively to our story of how we were inexplicably drawn along the path to Michi. “You’re not staying here? You can’t afford it,” he surmises, with some sympathy, before we have a chance to respond.

His sympathy is sincere: we are treated to lunch. The meticulous care taken over every detail here soon becomes apparent – every item of cutlery and tableware is unique, and beautiful. The chilled water is delicately flavoured with hints of fresh mint and lemon. And, as we discover from this and future meals, the food is divine. “Food is my obsession,” the Founder remarks. So much so that he has sent his chef, Ayu, for training abroad: she has had the opportunity to enhance her culinary skills in Italy, France and Japan.

Michi is a cooperative, built and run by the people of Jukut Paku, under the guidance of the Founder. It has now been almost ten years in the making, a process of design, training, construction and reconstruction. The workers will share in any profits of the retreat and, ultimately, it belongs to them. “I found my heart in harmony with the local people,” says the Founder. “I want to leave something good here.”

‘Only Yesterday’ suite

Each room or villa is different to the last detail (and of details there are many). One suite is inspired by the story of Odysseus, the rest by the Founder’s own lifetime of wandering, taking in the friends he met along the way (one suite is dedicated to Man Ray), his passions (coffee and Coco Chanel), and the good old days (the glittering Only Yesterday is replete with old cameras, typewriters, contemporary art and jazz memorabilia). There is a temple, a meditation hall, a library dedicated to Gandhi and Tagore, and a dance studio dedicated to celebrated Indian classical dancer Mrinalini Sarabhai.

While guests have been visiting the retreat for some time now, it has most often been by chance or invitation – “the longest soft opening in history,” as the Founder would have it. Now, however, the time has come for Michi to be discovered.

To find Michi, visit www.michiretreat.com or call +62 361 973432.

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Andrew Wellman

I drove slowly to limit spine damage from the mass of bumps and potholes shaking and rattling the ubiquitous Bali rental car; the Jimmy; the shocks were of course dead and the seats worn thoroughly such that the points of the springs would poke slightly and then not so slightly off the bigger bumps. I crept past Seminyak and then slowly through Kerobokan then took the turn off after Global eXtreme internet café where the bottleneck of traffic begins to subside and gives way to the hilly roads, less bumpy but still occasionally potholed, which then opens up to the lush green padi fields of Canggu. It’s in this part of Bali that Andrew has home & studio and what is the official residence of Stella; a dark brown Dane (as in Great and a quadruped) and perhaps the biggest dog in Canggu if not all of Bali.

We arrived at the residence of Mr. Wellman to be welcomed by Stella and a healthy portion of doggy drool. Andrew peered through the front door and came down to greet us, leading us through his garden and through his domicile.

Buddha pop

Walking through his home studio I gazed at some of his ever familiar Buddha (POP) icons and then at his surf paintings of giant waves and bright red boards. We moved through the airy and well lit studio and settled at the back of the house to a view of the padi fields surrounding and a tiny banana plantation that divided Andrew’s home from the next residence down.

We drank cool refreshing lemonade, sucked in some fresh air and delved into Andrew Wellman the Pop Artist. Born and, as he puts it, ‘bred’ in Melbourne, 1966 he waited till 1989 when he ‘escaped from completing an uninspiring degree and commenced traveling the globe.’

In 1998 he settled in Ubud to work and learn art world tactics with Symon, one of Bali’s most established artists, at his Art Zoo. This is where Andrew commenced painting and gave up being just a voyeur in galleries.

Andrew’s art is inspired by his excitement for such artists as Magritte, Whiteley, Matisse, and Warhol and he is also holds fervor with the 50’s, highways and BIG bold advertising. This jumps back out in his art, with paintings of Vespas and Cadillacs as well as a recent piece I saw of giant INDOMILK cartons and a Cow.

Andrew uses a variety of media in his art, from acrylics, dirty charcoals and sensual oils to print on canvas, tin, mirrors, rice bags and more. He has exhibited from Melbourne to Bali, Jakarta to Singapore and his art can be found at Randelli Gallery Bali, Seminyak (+62361) 73 1488 as well as Krane Art Gallery Ubud, Bali, (+62361) 97 5440. In Jakarta you can find his pieces at the JICC, Tamarind (+6221) 718 0031 and at Toi Moi in Kemang.

He describes himself as an autobiographical artist inspired by objects of beauty and loved ones. The man and his art are bold, straightforward, amusing and fun. He paints what he loves and that’s why you’ll find canvases of Stella chasing a ball at the beach leaning against the studio wall, a string of vespas scooting across a skinny canvas, surfers riding down ultramarine waves. Andrew paints what he does and does what he paints; a gentle soul with a permanent smile on his face, most definitely induced by his lifestyle. He enjoys art and living in Bali and he comes across as a man who is doing what he wants, loving it and ready to share his sense of good clean fun and beautiful things with the world. With Andrew what you see is what you get. Wellman’s art is direct, strong & vivid ‘like those classic pop songs that you love the first time you hear them…’

From KABAR October 2005

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Last Day, Jakarta

A man sits behind a desk, chin resting on one hand, gazing into space. A young woman rests her head against his, embracing him gently. Behind them is a bust of Mahatma Ghandi; the desk is stacked with classical CDs, books and papers.

The look of sadness on the man’s face and the gesture of comfort on the part of the woman are unmistakable even before you read the caption beside the picture and learn that this is none other than Abdurrhaman Wahid, or Gus Dur, Indonesia’s first democratically elected president since Suharto and that he is being consoled by his daughter on the night of his impeachment.

“It’s a very beautiful moment,” says John Stanmeyer of the photograph, which is part of an exhibition at the newly opened Exhibit Gallery in Bali. “It happened very quickly; I was standing outside the room so the door frame is in the photo. It was a private moment between father and daughter.”

Just a day before, he’d shot footage of the Indonesian military turning the turrets of their tanks toward the royal palace, a wholly symbolic gesture that signalled Gus Dur’s imminent fall from power.

Sitting on a Javanese daybed sipping coffee in his studio in rural Bali, such historical upheavals seem a world away. Yet as a freelance photographer under contract with TIME magazine, it is the American’s job to capture such moments, many of which have graced the covers of the global newsweekly, not to mention those of National Geographic, Fortune, Asiaweek and French weekly Courrier. For the last decade, he has trained his lens on Asia, documenting some of the region’s most pivotal events and developments, from something as abrupt and devastating as the tsunami in Aceh to a process as nebulous as the shifting zeitgeist in China, (captured in a photograph of a Chinese teen sporting pink shades and a T-shirt bearing a pop-art image of Mao, against a backdrop of high rises).

The few journalists that occupy this frontline not only report the news, they often make it. Does Stanmeyer see it as a privileged position? “I have a huge responsibility… to deliver things honestly, purely, in a balanced way and without prejudice to either side if it’s a conflict situation. Privileged? I probably see too much; I don’t need to see all of it to understand it.”

Red Light – Ruly, China 1999

Two decades earlier, Stanmeyer occupied a very different world. Starting his career at a very young age, he found himself working as a fashion photographer in Europe for magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and Andy Warhol’s Interview, as part of a burgeoning style elite. “This was at the time before the supermodel era,” he explains. “I’d been to Art School and failed every journalism course I took!”

Just as he was beginning to realise quite how lucrative a career in fashion could be, the young photographer experienced something of an epiphany. “There was a moment in my early 20s…it must have been ‘83 or ‘84, when I realised I was brainwashing people into thinking that who they were was what they wore. I’d been using my hammer and nail to build the wrong piece of furniture.” Far from some kind of celestial radiance, it was the stark light of reality that led him away from fashion and the excessive levels of marketing it was coming to engender. Moving away from Italy, he came across a group of Peace Corps workers in Madrid who’d recently returned from Haiti, and it was on the troubled Caribbean island that he produced his first piece of documentary photography in the early ’90s.

At that time, the people of the island nation were suffering in the aftermath of a military coup that had in turn impelled a debilitating UN embargo – “I was appalled by what was going on… it was hard to believe this was happening just 90 miles away from the richest nation on earth!”

In effect, Stanmeyer had discovered his purpose. He took a job at the Tampa Tribune, a major daily newspaper in Florida, where he set about learning the tools of his trade. While some of his colleagues complained at the pedestrian assignments, Stanmeyer welcomed the opportunity to cover the country fair yet again – he knew he wasn’t going to be there forever. At the same time, he met his wife Anastacia, a writer, and the two began funding their own trips to document the crises of the time.

“We would save coins all year long…we sent ourselves to Sudan by saving coins. We’d come back and they’d give us a front page, a double spread in the middle in colour and another third page. We didn’t get paid, but we had this platform from which to speak about issues and this meant something to us.”

The whole notion of purpose seems to lie at the heart of Stanmeyer’s work. There is little vanity about him and he talks about his photography as first and foremost a tool for making people think, for effecting social change. His personal projects over the years confirm this – he’s spent the last eight years documenting the spread of AIDS throughout Asia and as a founder member of highly respected photography agency vii he’s been at the heart of two major book projects, WAR and RETHINK which he describes as “testimonials of the last five years of humanity.”

This is far from your typical coffee table fare, dealing as it does with the world’s current conflicts and the roots of 9/11. The seminars he holds in New York are invariably sold out, not with journalist colleagues (”what would be the point? They already get it!”) but with people who are less familiar with the issues he’s talking about.

Balloons

But what is such a man doing in this tropical island idyll in the heart of Indonesia while his peers rent apartments in New York or London or Hong Kong? His first visit to Indonesia was at the cusp of the economic meltdown in 1998; more than twenty visits and five years would pass before he chose to make it his home. “I fell in love with the country. Until moving here, all the work I’d done in Indonesia had been about very serious social issues…stuff that probably would scare most people when I think about it, yet I’ve invested everything I’ve got in this place.”

Ironically, Bali was for a long time one of the islands Stanmeyer liked the least, always put off by the excessive tourism. It wasn’t until after the first Bali bomb in 2002 that he saw the island in a different light. He’d spent the first week after the attack in Java, trying to understand its dynamics as evidence began to slowly emerge. “I saw a totally different side to the Balinese…this love and compassion brought about by darkness and evil and ill deeds and the suffering that comes from them. They had such enormous humility and compassion. TIME was doing a story about individuals who saved others and through that I met a group of people who let me know there was something very special here. I flew home and said to my wife, what about Bali?”

Something more ambiguous draws him to the archipelago as a whole, however, something that appeals in a very personal way. He describes it as the striking rapidity of Indonesian society, the extremes he’s encountered here, from placidity to anarchy, enormous wealth to abject poverty – “it’s a country that can turn on a dime – I guess everywhere does, but I just love deep immersion cultures, cultures that retain their roots amidst the bombardment of western culture,” he says. There is also the sheer diversity of cultures, peoples and ideas that populate it. “How do you manage and keep united a country that contains such diversity? Imagine five or six African or South American nations all becoming one, spread across three time zones and the size of North America. I respect anyone who’s willing to try and manage that!”

As an emerging – or re-emerging democracy, Stanmeyer sees an intriguing complexity of issues at work in today’s Indonesia. After what he views as an extended period of stagnation, we’re now experiencing the “pulls, contractions and twists of a nation maturing and growing.” It is a growth predicated on such enormous diversity and yet he believes that the country is on a better path than it has ever been. Of course pressing concerns like corruption will take time – “We need at least another generation,” he states emphatically. One of the biggest problems in this light is a simple one.

“Everyone globally and in Indonesia wants and needs proper goods and services – decent education, proper health care, a solid legal system, honest police officials, good roads, etc – but few pay or more so, are able to pay taxes because of such low incomes. These alleged corrupt civil servants likely play the corruption game because many are so poorly paid. How can you pay good salaries (salaries one can actually live on) if no one is contributing, or more so if funds through service taxes or through aids grants are not allocated properly to societies needs? It’s not rocket science, it’s fundamental.”

There is very little finger pointing in any of his discussion about geo-political issues. One could be cynical and suggest this is the simple diplomacy required of a man in his position – though he’s clearly impatient at some of the attitudes he encounters in the country of his birth, especially those who question his decision to live in Indonesia. “There is a form of extreme interpretation of Islam, but it’s a very small percentage of people. We have more lunatics in North America for God’s sake. Indonesia is not a hotbed of radical Islam.”

It doesn’t come across as just diplomacy though, rather a deeper sense of the way in which we are all connected. “My blood can run in your veins and mine in yours,” he says early in the interview. “How are we any different? And yet because we fail to look at that as humans, we perpetuate conflict, war, poverty…it’s all interconnected. We’re all connected, from a rice farmer to a politician.”

From KABAR September 2006

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