Yesterday’s evening massage was tough, painful, but refreshing! The 25 years young masseuse explained me amongst others, that a traditional marriage in Bali cost 25 billion of rupiahs, about Eur 1.850, a fortune for the majority of the Indonesian people. Surprising how much money is spent for marriages, funerals, daily offerings, and such by sacrificing the day-to-day expenses as food, housing, clothes ….
Our bikes were waiting for us this morning at 8 am and we kicked of right away. Quite scary to cycle on the roads together with the cars and motorcycles; there are no individual cycle lanes. On top of that, even being Dutch, I am not used anymore to bike, so happily enough quite quick we could take a side-way, where it was less busy.
The Balinese are nominally Hindus, but Balinese Hinduism is half a world away from that of India. When the Majapahits (last great Javanese Hindu dynasty, pushed out of Java into Bali by the rise of Islamic power) evacuated to Bali, they took with them their religion and its rituals, as well as their art, literature, music and culture.
Families worship their ancestors in family temples, clans in clan temples and the whole village in the
pura puseh (pura = temple).
The simple shrines or thrones you see - for example, in rice fields or next to sacred old trees - are not real temples, as they are not walled. You’ll find these shrines in all sorts of places, often overlooking intersections or dangerous curves in the road to protect road users.
Knowing this, it is still not easy for a non-initiate to distinguish a family temple from a pura puseh, so this morning we stepped in right away in a family temple…. An old woman - busy to prepare some offerings with another old man - shouted something in Indonesian and there a young man showed up being able to speak English, who explained us quite a bit about his family temple. After having drunken and eaten a coconut he offered to us, we left with him to see his next-door living brother being a painter. Nice works, but impossible to take with us.
Off for our next stretch, looking for
Yeh Pulu, a 25 mtr-long carved cliff face, believed to be a hermitage dating from the late 14th century. Not easy to find with missing road names and a simple map, but Arjan managed pretty well (he better does, because do not count on my orientation powers …). The energetic frieze includes various scenes of everyday life. One theory is that they are events from the life of Krishna, the Hindu god.
An old couple was busy preparing offerings and the old woman was initiating us in some rituals of purification. The explanation fully in Indonesian, it was hard for us to understand it, but we had quite some fun with her, since she dragged us around to take pictures with her in any stage of the rituals and she was laughing a lot about the fact that we are much taller than she is.
On our way back by feet to our bikes, we made a highly necessary drink stop at a lovely place in the middle of rice paddies, coconut and banana trees. A charming lady served us great fresh mandarin juice and we talked together. She explained, that being pregnant and mother of already 2 children she had quite a tough life, since she had to cook for both her parents-in-law as well as their parents, who happened to be the couple of the
Yeh Pulu! When the old man arrived, she suddenly hid away, telling us that his mind is something strange and that he sometimes beats her. But …. she prefers to keep the harmony of the family instead of complaining about the fact that she is beaten, and simply lives with it/him.
A sad story about the negative side effects of social control.
Off again to find this time a real
pura puseh.
We reached an area with a lot of parked motorcycles: that was the place of the cock fighting a man was telling us about earlier that day. Both we are not found of games where animals got killed just for fun, but being around we decided to have a look. Well, indeed the cocks had knives bound to their legs, so every fight finished with a wounded and finally dead one (since the wounded ones were killed anyway by humans at the end of the match). A lot of money (i.e. gambling) was going on as well during the matches.
The matches were organized next door to the majestic
Pura Samuan Tiga (Temple of the Meeting of the Three), surprising. After having bought a sarong for me (obligation for visits to Balinese temples) we paid a visit to this temple. We were lucky, since a lot of women were busy preparing offerings for a ceremony being held in 2 days. One of the woman speaking very good English explained us a lot about the ceremony (connected to purification) and the fact, that the preparation of the offerings takes such a long time, that the women of any surrounding village have to contribute to it in sequences.
We also talked to her about the difference in lifestyle between Europeans and Balinese people: quite traditional in the major part of the island. For instance, I am sitting right now in a quite modern internet cafe, and just this very moment I am working on this blog a girl is stepping in with a plateau with offerings and incense on it, which she is placing into the small internet café temple. She is as well doing some rituals above the head and the PC of the local manager.
On top of that she places some offerings just in front of the door of the internet café, such is done for any shop. One has to be careful walking on the streets, because before you know you step in the middle of an offering, though nobody will blame you for such.
I had to explain her that it is not necessarily true that all Europeans are happy and smiling, like they may do if they are on holidays in Bali….. Still personally I would not want to change with her; because of 1. the incredible high steaming temperatures (Annette, you are right, these holidays are particularly steaming….) and 2. the important social control. Indeed the individuality may go beyond some borders in Europe, but personally I prefer such rather than the high social control in Indonesia. Remember of what the other woman earlier today was telling us …
She also explained that Balinese have traditional caste divisions that resemble the Indian Hindu system, although there are non ‘untouchables’. Nor is there separation of labour based on caste, except for the Brahmana priesthood. Over 90% of the population belongs to the common Sudra caste, which now included many wealthy Balinese. The main significance of caste is in religious roles and rituals, and its influence on Balinese language.
We decided to return to the hotel early afternoon, because it was getting too hot again. After cooling down in our AC-hotel room and a rain shower outside, we made a walk through another section of Ubud and quite fast we came again face-to-face with the regular expression of the Hinduism: a temple ceremony with smartly dressed up children and offerings was going on. Having left our sarongs in the hotel, we could not assist to it, a pity.
We walked as well in the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, housing 3 holy temples and lots of hungry Balinese macaques.
Annette: triest van Rolando Villazon, want ook al boycot ik hem sinds korte tijd, zoiets gun je hem niet.
J&T: veel succes met de tentoonstelling morgen!
A & I – 08-05-09 – another hot day in Ubud (with a rain shower yesterday and today, but even that helps only for a while to drop the temperature)
