Alex in Bali: What we should have learned in kindergarten- Fri 11/14/08

Dear All,

I have to apologize for making it seem like the purification ceremony at my host's compound was a big event. I have since been to the mountaintop and seen what is, by far, the most elaborate ceremony I will ever hope to see that doesn't involve royalty or a parade of elephants.

I was randomly invited to this ceremony by one of the managers of the restaurant. He sent me out to get all dressed up, Bali style, and we attended on a day that about a thousand people were milling about in the enormous compound of another big-shot family. I ate a lot and met a visiting American named Steve who knew the wife of the guy who was responsible for the whole thing. I did not, however, realize what I was missing in my rush to the food line and my assumption that one temple event is very much like any other.

This realization hit me a few days later when Steve invited me back to the event, ostensibly to eat some more. We met in the restaurant next door to the compound and I met his friend who is like a mirror image of my host, just less interesting. She too had married a savvy Balinese guy and they had built up their restaurant and crafts empire into a respectable cash cow. That money, was now being poured, literally, into a huge re-dedication ceremony for the family shrine which had been completely torn down and rebuilt.

The wife took us on a tour of the shrine area, which was bigger by far than I had realized. Forty by forty feet square, it was so festooned with offerings that the twelve tall pagodas inside were practically buried. The bits of the shrines that were visible were elaborately carved with myriad religious symbolism. Huge bas reliefs completely covered in gold leaf. Over the whole of it was a temporary bamboo roof 25 feet in the air. Lights had been hung from it so that the ceremony could run late into the night for the two weeks it had already been going on. Thousands upon thousands of people were regularly visiting the enormous compound and getting fed great food, entertained by three gamelan and the same number of traditional dance troupes, and generally having a nice social experience. That was impressive, but I was more in awe of all the stuff.

The real stars of the show were the offerings. The fruit was piled four feet high and balanced like Chikita Banana's headdress (actually they are headdresses in a way, since women carry them to the ceremonies on their heads in long, colorful processionals). Like the ceremony at my host's house, there were both live and dead offering, animate and inanimate. There were no dead puppies this time (Thank God), but there was a dead sheep as well as an entire slaughtered water buffalo that was starting to stink. There were chicks and ducks in bamboo cages, still alive and sort of scattered about here and there. There was an entire dragon made out of, I assume, paper mache with it's skin completely covered in a kaleidoscope of raw beans and rice. Despite being so ornate, it immediately made me think of kindergarten when our teachers would have us make mother's day cards by pasting dried beans down in the shape of their names. It is now clear to me that they wanted us to achieve far more impressive levels of artistic expression. Our mother's must have been so secretly disappointed that all they got was one chintzy little card when what they really hoped for was a three-dimensional mosaic model of the Guggenheim done in the style of Gaudi. Sorry mom.

There were also huge statues made of various substances. They were made to look like small temples, ornately decorated as though carved, and terraced. Most were made out of dyed rice flour but one scary looking one was made entirely out of meat. There was a severed pig head at the base of that one, made to look like a dragon with spiky triangles of fat used for teeth. It had googly eyes, also made out of rounds of fat, with something raw forming the irises. All the way up that meat statue were intricate Balinese designs formed somehow from pressed organs and chuck. It was really quite fascinating, if you could get past the stench. Contributing to the various odors, was a smoky fire that had to be maintained for the duration of the two-week long event. Combined with the sticky sweet incense, it filled the oppressively humid, stagnant air around us with a putrid haze that complemented the rotting animal carcasses and meat statues oh so well.

I couldn't really stand to be there any more after that. We were excited about the food that was to come but by 10:30pm the priests had only just begun their incantations, and they hadn't even gotten to the part where the gilded urns containing the ashes of the family ancestors were taken out and paraded around the compound as part of their ten year exercise program. So we bailed and went to my restaurant, although frankly, I didn't feel much like a meal after that meat statue.

All this just to point out the incredible effort and expense contracted for in the name of religion. I feel I will have to return to this subject again and again because it is such an crucial piece of understanding what makes Bali tick. The center of all Balinese life is religious and communal. It blows my mind that there are whole industries here based around forming rice flour or meat products into pagodas.

That is enough for now. As usual, I'm excited for what might come next.

Love,
Alex

P.S. I have to make a few corrections to a previous e-mail. It turns out that while a lot of the offerings are thrown out, anything that is still fit for human consumption is generally split up and taken home by family members or guests. Also, the roosters that die in the cockfights are then eaten. Their meat is said to be especially flavorful. Also, (and I'm still a little unclear about this) cockfighting might actually be legal. It is gambling on the fights that is illegal. I do believe the disenfranchised Bali animal rights activists still have a case.

-The pics are a little hard to see but here they are anyway:

This gives you a tiny idea of the temple carvings