meditate with your four brothers like I teach you?"
"Yes."
"You still meditate like your Guru in India teach you?"
"Yes."
"You have bad dreams anymore?"
"No."
"You happy now with God?"
"Very."
"You love new boyfriend?"
"I think so. Yes."
"Then you must spoil him. And he must spoil you."
"OK," I promised.
"You are good friend to me. Better than friend. You are like my daughter," he said. (Not
like Sharon . . .) "When I die, you will come back to Bali, come to my cremation.
Balinese cremation ceremony very fun--you will like it."
"OK," I promised again, all choked up now.
"Let your conscience be your guide. If you have Western friends come to visit Bali, bring
them to me for palm-reading. I am very empty in my bank since the bomb. You want to
come with me to baby ceremony today?"
And this is how I ended up participating in the blessing of a baby who had reached the
age of six months, and who was now ready to touch the earth for the first time. The
Balinese don't let their children touch the ground for the first six months of life, because
newborn babies are considered to be gods sent straight from heaven, and you wouldn't let
a god crawl around on the floor with all the toenail clippings and cigarette butts. So
Balinese babies are carried for those first six months, revered as minor deities. If a baby
dies before it is six months old, it is given a special cremation ceremony and the ashes are
not placed in a human cemetery because this being was never human: it was only ever a
god. But if the baby lives to six months, then a big ceremony is held and the child's feet
are allowed to touch the earth at last and Junior is welcomed to the human race.
This ceremony today was held at the house of one of Ketut's neighbors. The baby in
question was a girl, already nicknamed Putu. Her parents were a beautiful teenage girl
and an equally beautiful teenage boy, who is the grandson of a man who is Ketut's cousin,
or something like that. Ketut wore his finest clothes for the event--a white satin sarong
(trimmed in gold) and a white, long-sleeved button-down jacket with gold buttons and a
Nehru collar, which made him look rather like a railroad porter or a busboy at a fancy
hotel. He had a white turban wrapped around his head. His hands, as he proudly showed
me, were all pimped out with giant gold rings and magic stones. About seven rings in
total. All of them with holy powers. He had his grandfather's shining brass bell for
summoning spirits, and he wanted me to take a lot of photographs of him.
We walked over to his neighbor's compound together. It was a considerable distance and
we had to walk on the busy main road for a while. I'd been in Bali almost four months,
and had never seen Ketut leave his compound before. It was disconcerting watching himwalk down the highway amid all the speeding cars and madcap motorcycles. He looked
so tiny and vulnerable. He looked so wrong set against this modern backdrop of traffic
and honking horns. It made me want to cry, for some reason, but I was feeling a little
extra emotive today anyway.
About forty guests were there already at the neighbor's house when we arrived, and the
family altar was heaped with offerings--piles of woven palm baskets filled with rice,
flowers, incense, roasted pigs, some dead geese and chickens, coconut and bits of
currency that fluttered around in the breeze. Everyone was decked out in their most
elegant silks and lace. I was underdressed, sweaty from my bike ride, self-conscious in
my broken T-shirt amid all this beauty. But I was welcomed exactly the way you would
want to be if you were the white girl who'd wandered in inappropriately attired and
uninvited. Everyone smiled at me with warmth, and then ignored me and commenced to
the part of the party where they all sat around admiring each other's clothes.
The ceremony took hours, Ketut officiating. Only an anthropologist with a team of
interpreters could tell you all that occurred, but some of the rituals I understood, from
Ketut's explanations and from books that I had read. The father held the baby during the
first round of blessings and the mother held an effigy of the baby--a coconut swaddled to
look like an infant. This coconut was blessed and doused with holy water just like the real
baby, then placed on the ground right before the baby's feet touch earth for the first time;
this is to fool the demons, who will attack the dummy baby and leave the real baby alone.
There were hours of chants, though, before that real baby's feet could touch ground. Ketut
rang his bell and sang his mantras endlessly, and the young parents beamed with pleasure
and pride. The guests came and went, milling about, gossiping, watching the ceremony
for a while, offering their gifts and then taking off for another appointment. It was all
strangely casual amid all the ancient ritualistic formality, sort of
backyard-picnic-meets-high-church. The mantras Ketut chanted to the baby were so
sweet, sounding like a combination of the sacred and the affectionate. While the mother
held the infant, Ketut waved before the child samples of food, fruit, flowers, water, bells,
a wing from the roast chicken, a bit of pork, a cracked coconut . . . With each new item
he would sing something to her. The baby would laugh and clap her hands, and Ketut
would laugh and keep singing.
I imagined my own translation of his words:
"Ohhhh . . . little baby, this is roast chicken for you to eat! Someday you will love roast
chicken and we hope you have lots of it! Ohhhhhhh . . . little baby, this is a chunk of
cooked rice, may you always have all the chunks of cooked rice you could ever desire,
may you be showered with rice for always. Ohhhhh . . . little baby, this is a coconut, isn't
it funny how this coconut looks, someday you will eat lots of coconuts! Ohhhhhh . . .
little baby, this is your family, do you not see how much your family adores you?
Ohhhhh . . . little baby, you are precious to the whole universe! You are an A-plus
student! You are our magnificent bunny! You are a yummy hunk of silly putty!
Ooohhhhh little baby, you are the Sultan of Swing, you are our everything . . ."
Everyone was blessed again and again with flower petals dipped in holy water. The
whole family took turns passing the baby around, cooing to her, while Ketut sang the
ancient mantras. They even let me hold the baby for a while, even in my jeans, and I
whispered my own blessings to her as everyone sang. "Good luck," I told her. "Be brave."
It was boiling hot, even in the shade. The young mother, dressed in a sexy bustier underher sheer lace shirt, was sweating. The young father, who didn't seem to know any facial
expression other than a massively proud grin, was also sweating. The various
grandmothers fanned themselves, got weary, sat down, stood up, fussed with the roasted
sacrificial pigs, chased away dogs. Everyone was alternately interested, not interested,
tired, laughing, earnest. But Ketut and the baby seemed to be locked in their own
experience together, riveted to each other's attention. The baby didn't take her eyes off the
old medicine man all day. Who ever heard of a six-month-old baby not crying or fussing
or sleeping for four straight hours in the hot sun, but just watching someone with
curiosity?
Ketut did his job well, and the baby did her job well, too. She was fully present for her
transformation ceremony from god-status to human-status. She was handling the
responsibilities marvelously, like a good Balinese girl already--steeped in ritual,
confident of her beliefs, obedient to the requirements of her culture.
At the end of all the chanting, the baby was wrapped in a long, clean white sheet that
hung far below her little legs, making her look tall and regal--a veritable debutante. Ketut
made a drawing on the bottom of a pottery bowl of the four directions of the universe,
filled the bowl with holy water and set it on the ground. This hand-drawn compass
marked the holy spot on earth where the baby's feet would first touch.
Then the whole family gathered by the baby, everyone seeming to hold her at the same
time, and-- oop! there goes!-- they lightly dipped the baby's feet in this pottery bowl full of
holy water, right above the magic drawing which encompassed the whole universe, and
then they touched her soles to the earth for the first time. When they lifted her back up
into the air, tiny damp footprints remained on the ground below her, orienting this child
at last onto the great Balinese grid, establishing who she was by establishing where she
was. Everyone clapped their hands, delighted. The little girl was one of us now. A human
being--with all the risks and thrills which that perplexing incarnation entails.
The baby looked up, looked around, smiled. She wasn't a god anymore. She didn't seem
to mind. She wasn't fearful at all. She seemed thoroughly satisfied with every decision
she had ever made.
106 106 106 106
The deal fell through with Wayan. That property Felipe had found for her somehow
didn't happen. When I ask Wayan what went wrong, I get some fuzzy reply about a lost
deed; I don't think I was ever told the real story. What matters is only that it's a dead deal.
I'm starting to get kind of panicked about this whole Wayan house situation. I try to
explain my urgency to her, saying, "Wayan--I have to leave Bali in less than two weeks
and go back to America. I can't face my friends who gave me all this money and tell themthat you still don't have a home."
"But Liz, if a place has no good taksu . . . "
Everybody has a different sense of urgency in this life.
But a few days later Wayan calls over at Felipe's house, giddy. She's found a different
piece of land, and this one she really loves. An emerald expanse of rice field on a quiet
road, close to town. It has good taksu written all over it. Wayan tells us that the land
belongs to a farmer, a friend of her father's, who is desperate for cash. He has seven aro
total to sell, but (needing fast money) would be willing to give her only the two aro she
can afford. She loves this land. I love this land. Felipe loves this land. Tutti--spinning
across the grass in circles, arms extended, a little Balinese Julie Andrews--loves it, too.
"Buy it," I tell Wayan.
But a few days pass, and she keeps stalling. "Do you want to live there or not?" I keep
asking.
She stalls some more, then changes her story again. This morning, she says, the farmer
called to tell her he isn't certain anymore whether he can sell only the two- aro parcel to
her; instead, he might want to sell the whole seven- aro lot intact . . . it's his wife that's
the problem . . . The farmer needs to talk to his wife, see if it's OK with her to break up
the land . . .
Wayan says, "Maybe if I had more money . . ."
Dear God, she wants me to come up with the cash to buy the whole chunk of land. Even
as I'm trying to figure out how to raise a staggering 22,000 extra American dollars, I'm
telling her, "Wayan, I can't do it, I don't have the money. Can't you make a deal with the
farmer?"
Then Wayan, whose eyes are not exactly meeting mine anymore, crochets a complicated
story. She tells me that she visited a mystic the other day and the mystic went into a
trance and said that Wayan absolutely needs to buy this entire seven- aro package in order
to make a good healing center . . . that this is destiny . . . and, anyway, the mystic also
said that if Wayan could have the entire package of land, then maybe she could someday
build a nice fancy hotel there . . .
A nice fancy hotel?
Ah.
That's when suddenly I go deaf and the birds stop singing and I can see Wayan's mouth
moving but I'm not listening to her anymore because a thought has just come, scrawled
blatantly across my mind: SHE'S FUCKING WITH YOU, GROCERIES.
I stand up, say good-bye to Wayan, walk home slowly and ask Felipe point-blank for his
opinion: "Is she fucking with me?"
He has not ever commented upon my business with Wayan, not once.
"Darling," he says kindly. "Of course she's fucking with you."
My heart drops into my guts with a splat.
"But not intentionally," he adds quickly. "You need to understand the thinking in Bali. It's
a way of life here for people to try to get the most money they can out of visitors. It's how
everyone survives. So she's making up some stories now about the farmer. Darling, since
when does a Balinese man need to talk to his wife before he can make a business deal?
Listen--the guy is desperate to sell her a small parcel; he already said he would. But she
wants the whole thing now. And she wants you to buy it for her."
I cringe at this for two reasons. First of all, I hate to think this could be true of Wayan.Second, I hate the cultural implications under his speech, the whiff of colonial White
Man's Burden stuff, the patronizing "this-is-what-all-these-people-are-like" argument.
But Felipe isn't a colonialist; he's a Brazilian. He explains, "Listen, I grew up poor in
South America. You think I don't understand the culture of this kind of poverty? You've
given Wayan more money than she's ever seen in her life and now she's thinking crazy.
As far as she's concerned, you're her miracle benefactor and this might be her last chance
to ever get a break. So she wants to get all she can before you go. For God's sake--four
months ago the poor woman didn't have enough money to buy lunch for her child and
now she wants a hotel?"
"What should I do?"
"Don't get angry about it, whatever happens. If you get angry, you'll lose her, and that
would be a pity because she's a marvelous person and she loves you. This is her survival
tactic, just accept that. You must not think that she's not a good person, or that she and
