Balinese Life
Who Wants to be a Hero?

Just as some other countries in Asian region, Indonesia also once underwent bitter life under occupation of colonialist for centuries. Condition of prolonged misery then generated the sense of unity and togetherness among citizens of several regions throughout this archipelago. With one voice and strong will, they struggled together for achieving the independence where they could determine their own fate. Fight after fight has been passed by before accomplishing the aspiration, independence.

Then, to commemorate the fights and respect the great heroes who have been willing to sacrifice everything they had, including their lives, the government decided a Memorial Day celebrated nationwide on 10 November. Meanwhile, similar local celebration also carried out to recall the warriors of Bali who had struggled bravely for this piece of land under commander of I Gusti Ngurah Rai. It is meant to memorize the struggle called Puputan Margarana of which the peak exploded at Marga Village Tabanan. Then, the celebration is done on 20 November.
As a matter of fact, the struggle itself does not come to an end yet. In the period of independence today, there are still many obstacles to face such as poverty, corruption and probably the most hazardous, terrorist attack that at all times treat our lives. The latter is difficult to detect. It can occur everywhere and anytime when we are inattentive. Maybe, we do not know if we savour chicken noodle or mixed rice together at the same warung or stall. Twice bomb in Bali and other places across Indonesia have become valuable experience to improve our vigilance. Bomb explosions that killed the locals and foreigners in Jakarta and Bali occurred one after another.
On handling the Bali Bomb I (2002), the Indonesian Police determined to provide one billion rewards for whoever give the information about the existence of two principal fugitives, Ashari and Noordin Top. Actually, this offer is an appealing figure. And this responsibility certainly should not be burdened merely to the police and related parties, but also all social components. However, up to this time, no one knows exactly about the hiding place of those fugitives. Why is this ‘reward hunting worth one billion’ not so attractive as similar weekly quiz broadcast on television? Won’t this make us a one billion hero?
Coinciding with the celebration of Memorial Day, we must be able to discover the heroic values, spirit, cooperation and so on left by our late great warriors. Probably, these values can be implemented by re-tightening our neighbourhood relationship starting from our own family, banjar or hamlet level, and then to wider scope. When we are busy earning our lives and our relationship looses, we may be inattentive to ‘strangers’ bringing the explosives around us. It is here where such catastrophe begins.
Small step like our care about environment determines our future. Let’s give support towards the empowerment of customary and administrative village in securing the territory as proposed by the Chief of Bali Police, Made Mangku Pastika. For us, the reward is important, but the more important is our awareness of the importance of security as it’s worth more than that. Keeping our security hand in hand and improving the alertness are some values like what past heroes have been done.(BTN/029)