June/July, 1998
No. 035/VI/98
cover story
After The Boom
What future is there for
Bali's modern theatre
scene?
Warung Society
Bali has its own history of
communal philosophising
and coffee-drinking
Renaissance
Twenty years of Bali's
Festival of the Arts
beyond
bali
Sumbawa's
Secrets
Photographs from
Kuang Amo
regular
features
Orchestrating a
cremation in Ubud
Home Grown
A preview of
the Quicksilver Pro
Adventure
Getting over a fear
of diving
Health and Beauty
Foreign aid for
optic
health
Books
The Painted Alphabet
reviewed
Food
Two boutique hotels,
two top chefs
Fiction
'Our Moon'
by Mas Ruscitadewi
advertising index for
Bali Echo web site
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Early on the morning of the cremation, huge crowds are already assembled outside the palace. A policeman estimates 50,000 people came to town to watch. As I enter the palace, there are designated greeters (or guards?) at the door. Silahkan masuk, minum. Please come in, have a drink. This is like a diplomatic ceremony. The men all sit in the outer courtyard talking. Inside are the women, children and priests. We are summoned to enjoy a buffet lunch, while preparatory rituals are carried out around body.
"Food is important in ceremonies. It is like a symbol. Preparation of food is crucial. One of the princes is in charge of the kitchen. Nothing goes out without him looking at it first. It has to be right. Some of the food that is given to helpers and guests is prepared in the kitchens of people in the community. All this is coordinated. A portion of the food gifts from the community goes to the palace for the ceremony, and a portion goes back to the community. The palace here always divides the leftovers evenly among the community. Other villages don’t. They sometimes sell it, or keep it."
Two chickens have been tied to the base of the body’s platform, and are peeping desperately. I expect they will play a sacrificial role in one of the subsidiary ceremonies today. Big piles of rotting, meat-laden offerings lie, reeking, a little to the east of the body. Old women shuffle around with lashings of holy water, adjusting offerings, adding indecipherable bits and helping priests.
"The eldest son has the most responsibility for the cremation. When someone’s father dies it will be hard for him. One thing is, a great deal of holy water is needed. Here, people go to the eleven holy springs on the edge of town, all at the same time, to collect water to use in the ceremonies, and to wash the body, on a day the priest chooses. This is a beautiful ritual; a special procession.
A day or so before the cremation, the body is wrapped and unwrapped again. The old wrapping is taken by th eldest son to the cremation ground at midnight and placed under the spot where the body will be burned. Many people are afraid to do this. The times when the son has to do things alone at night are considered dangerous in case of black magic."
There is nothing here that really looks like a body, but you can feel its presence; a vortex of energy. There’s that fruity, fleshy odour again. Is it coming from an animal offering? From a ritual sacrifice? Or from the body? What’s the difference? The body is an offering, too. We are all ritual sacrifices. The stench suggests formaldehyde. I am told that herb and mineral embalming is still the norm, but that rich people who can afford it use modern, scientific embalming.
Men dressed like warriors from Bali’s golden age stand waiting for the procession, gripping their heirloom spears called tumbak. Did those blades once bite through living flesh in the battles between rival kingdoms? The Royal Family and their milieu are sitting with coffee and cakes, or milling around, half-consciously. Many have not slept for days, burdened with their part in the preparatory rites. There was a ritual last night at midnight.
"The eldest son of the deceased goes at midnight with no lamp, to a special place in the rice fields where five water courses diverge in an auspicious pattern. The light of the five streams leads the soul to freedom. Alone in the dark he goes to collect water from each stream, using a coconut shell, turned backwards, facing downhill. This is difficult, and if anyone wants to do magic to upset the ceremony, this is the time. Some people are afraid to do this. His family and supporters can go with him, but they can’t go all the way. That is like life, and like death. Our friends can go along, but in the end, we struggle alone."
There was another ceremony at four in the morning to put the cremation tower together. No wonder, so many of the princes are wearing dark sunglasses to shield their tired eyes today.
“A dangerous time is when they pull the top of the cremation tower up onto its base levels. Using a single bamboo cord. We have eight guardians standing at the eight compass points around events that are dangerous, like at a calonarang dance. They have to stay in place, guarding a triangle in front of them, so together they form a star, with the centre protected eight times over. If the action starts to push outside the centre, helpers push the people back in.”
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