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I don’t know how old my medicine man is. I’ve asked him, but he’s not certain. I seem to re-
member, when I was here two years ago, the translator saying that he was eighty. But Mario
asked him the other day how old he was and Ketut said, “Maybe sixty-five, not sure.” When I
asked him what year he was born, he said he didn’t remember being born. I know he was an
adult when the Japanese were occupying Bali during World War II, which could make him
about eighty now. But when he told me the story about burning his arm as a young man, and I
asked him what year that had happened, he said, “I don’t know. Maybe 1920?” So if he was
around twenty years old in 1920, then that makes him what now? Maybe a hundred and five?
So we can estimate that he’s somewhere between sixty and a hundred and five years old.
I’ve also noticed that his estimation of his age changes by the day, based on how he feels.
When he’s really tired, he’ll sigh and say, “Maybe eighty-five today,” but when he’s feeling
more upbeat he’ll say, “I think I’m sixty today.” Perhaps this is as good a way of estimating
age as any—how old do you feel? What else matters, really? Still, I’m always trying to figure it
out. One afternoon I got really simple, and just said, “Ketut—when is your birthday?”
“Thursday,” he said.
“This Thursday?”
“No. Not this Thursday. A Thursday.”
This is a good start... but is there no more information than that? A Thursday in what
month? In what year? No telling. Anyway, the day of the week that you were born is more im-
portant in Bali than the year, which is why, even though Ketut doesn’t know how old he is, he
was able to tell me that the patron god of children born on Thursdays is Shiva the Destroyer,
and that the day has two guiding animal spirits—the lion and the tiger. The official tree of chil-
dren born on Thursday is the banyan. The official bird is the peacock. A person born on
Thursday is always talking first, interrupting everyone else, can be a little aggressive, tends to
be handsome (“a playboy or playgirl,” in Ketut’s words) but has a decent overall character,
with an excellent memory and a desire to help other people.
When his Balinese patients come to Ketut with serious health or economic or relationship
problems, he always asks on which day of the week they were born, in order to concoct the