On the day we returned to Bali from Borneo, Gusti Nyoman Lempad, the great Balinese artist, died a conscious death aged 116 in the nearby village of Peliatan. John Darling, our Australian anthropologist friend and an immediate neighbour of Lempad’s, brought the news. I was shocked at first, but the Balinese attitude was that it was high time he moved on, and that after 116 years of conscious living a man ought to know how to die.
