Bali casts its magic on me.

I went back to 1931 for the last one week in a place that is right next to paradise. I was in Bali with my wife to celebrate my 35th birthday as well as our 7th wedding anniversary in the Island of Gods. Balinese have their own calendar and this year in their calendar is 1931.

We both were fascinated by the temples, culture, religion, practice of ceremonies, dance, art, offerings to gods, love of the people etc. This magnificent piece of land that has embraced Hinduism, refreshed our minds on our religion unlike our home country, India, the birth place of Hinduism where the world’s oldest religion has become a victim of modernization. It is indeed very rare to come across a public performance of a dance or a skit based on greatest Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata in India currently whereas one can watch them on a daily basis in Bali not for touristy reasons but purely as part of the Balinese lifestyle. A lifestyle that is tantamount with Hindu ceremonies.

Everywhere around Bali, the sight of women carrying rice-and-flower offerings on banana leaves was a common sight. Offerings are made twice daily to the gods of the house and to the gods honored in small shrines everywhere. The word Bali, dating from the 9th century, means offering.

We watched the Kecak dance atop a hill overlooking the magnificient Indian Ocean with the incredible view of the sunset. Kecak is one of the most famous of Balinese dances. It is unusual because it has no musical accompaniment like any other dance performance. The rhythm of the dance is produced by the chanting of 'monkey' chorus. It’s the forty or so men in the checkered pants that make Kecak a fascinating performance to watch.

They are both the choir and the props, providing the music for the story in a series of constant vocal chants that change with the mood of the actors. They don't sit still, either, they wave their arms to simulate fire, and reposition themselves around the stage to represent wind and fire, prison cells, and unseen hand of protection from the gods.

The dance is played in five acts and lasts roughly an hour. The plot is taken from the Hindu epic Ramayana, which tells the story of Prince Rama and his rescue of Princess Sita, who gets kidnapped by the evil King of Lanka, Rahwana. With the help of Hanuman, the white monkey and his force, Rama rescues his wife and defeats the evil Rahwana.

As we rode around the island on a motorbike, all we saw to our both sides was green patches of paddy fields, the planted rice terraces, the rice harvesters beating the grains off the stalks, duck shepherds walking their flocks to the fields, and water buffaloes turning over the empty fields. This lush, tropical island is full of visual delights, such as red-flowering banana plants or white-petaled trees. Though the Balinese are not well-to-do, they appeared to enjoy a good basic diet of rice, soybeans, and vegetables, with occasional animal protein. They live a life relatively free of unwanted western-style stress, but seasoned by the sweat of laborious work in the rice fields.

A few leisure visits to Balinese Art Galleries in Ubud, Bali made me believe that every Balinese is an artist. To perform or create art is something specially gifted to them by their gods. I was left doubtless that every child grows up with a sense of dance, art or crafts of some kind.

If you are planning a holiday in tropical island paradise, just consider Bali, an island that Jawaharlal Nehru once famously described as "the morning of the world". Bali is truly special and rare is the traveler who returns home untouched by its magic, especially the pervasive spirituality and compelling human bonds that the Balinese exhibit.