When I was a child, my mother, my grandmother or sometimes my father told me bedtime stories occasionally. The stories were Balinese traditional folktales with their cheeky monkey or greedy dog, arrogant king or funny attendant; which were ready to put me into sound sleep. The traditional Balinese folktales range from local tales to fables which are taken from Tantri story, transferred from older generation to the younger one every night before the young soundly asleep.

Unfortunately the process of transferring the folktales comes to a halt nowadays. Most of Balinese parents no longer tell the bedtime stories to their children, only few Balinese parents keep this practice. With the rapid spread of Television, VCD or DVD players, children get their new tales from these devices, whether they are cartoon or Hollywood movies. And the parents are quite busy with Telenovela, Chinese Kung Fu, Bollywood or Hollywood cinemas, not to mention multitude Indonesian Sinetrons broadcast from early in afternoon until late at night.

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Arie Smit was born in Zaandam in the the Netherlands on April 15, 1916 and was christened Adrianus Wilhelmus Smit. He first arrived in Batavia (Jakarta) in 1938. Drafted by the army he was set to work in the Topographical Service in the then Dutch East Indies. There he used to etch Balinese mountains onto maps and this ignited his desire to one day go to Bali.

In 1951 Smit became an Indonesia citizen. “I was so sure that this my is my country” he says. And he has stayed true to his words. Since his arrival in Bali in 1956, this tropical paradise has been his home and his inspiration.

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