Eat, Pray, Love

they never so much as tap their feet or roll their eyes in exasperation. Extraordinary, too, is
the way the children wait, leaning up against their beautiful mothers, playing with their own
fingers to pass the time. I’m always amused later when it turns out that these same tranquil
children have been brought over to see Ketut because the mother and father have decided
that the child is “too naughty” and needs a cure. That little girl? That little three-year-old girl
who was sitting silently in the hot sun for four straight hours, without complaint or snack or
toy? She’s naughty? I wish I could say, “People—you want to see naughty, I’ll take you to
America, show you some kids that’ll have you believing in Ritalin.” But there’s just a different
standard here for good behavior in children.
Ketut treated all the patients obligingly, one after another, seemingly unconcerned by the
passage of time, giving all exactly the attention they needed regardless of who was waiting to
be seen next. He was so busy he didn’t even get his one meal at lunchtime, but stayed glued
to his porch, obliged by his respect for God and his ancestors to sit there for hours on end,
healing everyone. By evening, his eyes looked as tired as the eyes of a Civil War field sur-
geon. His last patient of the day had been a deeply troubled middle-aged Balinese man com-
plaining that he had not slept well in weeks; he was being haunted, he said, by a nightmare of
“drowning in two rivers at the same time.”
Until this evening, I still wasn’t sure what my role was in Ketut Liyer’s life. Every day I’ve
been asking him if he’s really sure he wants me around, and he keeps insisting that I must
come and spend time with him. I feel guilty taking up so much of his day, but he always
seems disappointed when I leave at the end of the afternoon. I’m not teaching him any Eng-
lish, not really. Whatever English he already learned however many decades ago has been
cemented into his mind by now and there isn’t much space for correction or new vocabulary.
It’s all I can do to get him to say, “Nice to see you,” when I arrive, instead of “Nice to meet
you.”
Tonight, when his last patient had left and Ketut was exhausted, looking ancient from the
weariness of service, I asked him whether I should go now and let him have some privacy,
and he replied, “I always have time for you.” Then he asked me to tell him some stories about
India, about America, about Italy, about my family. That’s when I realized that I am not Ketut
Liyer’s English teacher, nor am I exactly his theological student, but I am the merest and
simplest of pleasures for this old medicine man—I am his company. I’m somebody he can talk
to because he enjoys hearing about the world and he hasn’t had much of a chance to see it.
In our hours together on this porch, Ketut has asked me questions about everything from
how much cars cost in Mexico to what causes AIDS. (I did my best with both topics, though I
believe there are experts who could have answered with more substance.) Ketut has never
been off the island of Bali in his life. He has spent very little time, actually, off this porch. He