Hiya,
In staying with an established family here, I really am getting to see some things other travelers would never get to experience.
The ceremony to purify the compound was most enlightening. It started early in the morning with the arrival of hordes of men and women connected to the family in some way. The caste system is alive and well here in Indonesia. My hosts husband is Brahman and kind of a big deal here as he is the firstborn of a very well-known and influential family. As a result, he not only has people running around doing things for him, he also bears a lot of spiritual responsibility within the community. This was to be only a small ceremony yet over the course of the day, hundreds of people came by to take part and pay respects.
The men and women ran around setting up the offerings and various elevated bamboo and wicker structures that signify the four cardinal directions, the four godheads, their appropriate colors, symbolism like that. Essentially, this community of Hindus worships Shiva, although Brahma, Vishnu, and I think Krishna are also very important. A simple drive around Denpasar confirms that the Baghavad-Gita and the Ramayana are still living documents. There are statues and artwork of Arjuna, Bima, Rama, Hanuman and all the major characters everywhere you look (I can't believe that something I studied in College is actually turning out to be useful).
Once the containers were all set up, the offerings began to arrive. And arrive, and arrive, and arrive. There were literally hundreds of pounds of offerings from the mundane to the most ridiculous things imaginable. There were flowers, huge arrangements of flowers. Food, piles of it. Chickens, and ducks both cooked and with the feathers and heads still on. There was an entire spit roasted suckling pig (this is a delicacy and we ate it later. Yum). And, I shit you not, there was a dead puppy offering. It was the cutest dead puppy offering I have ever seen. They had scooped the goop out of the body cavity but left the head and feet intact. It's fuzzy light-brown fur still had a healthy sheen to it. It looked to me like a war pelt for the cutest little barbarian in the history of the world.
Once the offerings were all piled up, the priest got onto his dais and the ceremony began. There was no fanfare or anything, no singing of hymns, he just sat cross-legged, chanting, making hand gestures and ringing his little bell. I was in the kitchen and didn't even realize that the thing had started. Nobody really seemed to care. People mingled about, smoking and drinking coffee, and chatting with friends and family. Many had their backs turned to the priest. There seems to be a pervasive blurring of the lines between the sacred and the profane here. This is becoming more and more apparent the more I see and learn.
The priest was a funny guy in his own right. He had all the traditional garb, blinding white robes and a fancy crown. He had bells, bowls, wingdings and doohickeys, and next to him he had a cheap black suitcase that he had used to bring all that stuff there. I was allowed to take pictures and even some video (see links below). Needless to say I was very interested in the whole event and was asking my host a lot of questions about the significance of this and that. Then, just as I was asking about what it takes to become a priest, he stopped his incantations and answered a call on his cell phone. When he hung up, he picked up chanting without missing a beat. I tried to get my camera out to snap a picture but I was too slow. Apparently, it is sort of OK here to put Shiva on hold while you take another call.
There was almost no interaction with the crowd until the very end. Then, the family was invited to pray with the priest and anyone can come up and get blessed. I joined in and got sprayed with holy water and the priest ground some kernels of rice into my forehead. The whole thing took about an hour to complete and then they chopped up the Babi Guling (roast, suckling pig), laid out a huge buffet of food and everyone got to eat. The pig is the only thing they reuse from the enormous pile of offerings and that is fortunate because it is one of the best things I have ever tasted. Everything else gets thrown out. It is an interesting quirk about Bali that they don't recycle the offerings by giving them to the poor (as they do in India). Here, while there are plenty of poor people, there are very few that are destitute, so the food goes to waste.
After eating, the men retired to the courtyard so that the cockfights could begin. The birds are trained to jump up in the air and kick down at each other. Specially made knives are tied to the back of the rooster's feet so that a solid blow will off the other bird. Everyone takes bets and then the handlers make the two birds look at each other while they vigorously ruffle their neck feathers, pull their plumage up, and slap them right in their chicken butt holes. While strange to watch, I'm pretty sure this last technique would piss me off too. The birds associate the manhandling with their opponent and once they are sufficiently riled up, they are released and the blood begins to flow.
The fights don't last long. Some for 30 seconds and some for a few minutes. I'm not entirely sure as I could only stomach one fight, pretty much purely to satisfy my morbid curiosity (and so that I could tell you all about it). Once the first bird is down, it is taken into the compound, its throat is slit and they drip the blood around the perimeter as another kind of offering. From the inside of the compound, nauseous, I could hear the yells and cheers for another hour as the men made and lost money on other fights.
My host informed me that not everyone is eager to see animals in mortal combat. Many people here oppose this type of thing. In fact, cockfighting is illegal....unless it takes place during a religious ceremony since the blood is needed for the offering anyway. I'm not sure they get it.
After the fights were over, the workers came back and within the hour the entire compound was completely clean. But for some telltale drops of chicken blood on the cement, it was as if none of this had ever happened.
Love,
Alex
Here are some links to the ceremony and the cockfight. I don't show the end of the cockfight so if you are curious, it is PG-13.
Ceremony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLKJ4spE65I
Cockfight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsHd6sVehL8
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