Eat, Pray, Love

correct prayers and medicines to help them. Because sometimes, Ketut says, “people are
sick in the birthday,” and they need a little astrological adjustment in order to set them in bal-
ance again. A local family brought their youngest son to see Ketut the other day. The child
was maybe four years old. I asked what the problem was and Ketut translated that the family
was concerned about “problems with very aggressive this boy. This boy not take orders. Bad
behave. Not pay attention. Everyone in house tired from the boy. Also, sometimes this boy
too dizzy.”
Ketut asked the parents if he could hold the child for a moment. They put their son in Ke-
tut’s lap and the boy leaned back against the old medicine man’s chest, relaxed and unafraid.
Ketut held him tenderly, placed a palm on the child’s forehead, shut his eyes. He then placed
a palm on the boy’s belly, shut his eyes again. He was smiling and speaking gently to the
child the whole time. The examination was quickly over. Ketut handed the boy back to his par-
ents, and the people left soon after with a prescription and some holy water. Ketut told me
he’d asked the parents about the circumstances of the boy’s birth and had discovered the
child had been born under a bad star and on a Saturday—a day of birth which contains ele-
ments of potentially bad spirits, like crow spirit, owl spirit, rooster spirit (this is what makes the
child a fighter) and puppet spirit (this is what’s causing his dizziness). But it was not all bad
news. Being born on Saturday, the boy’s body also contained rainbow spirit and butterfly spir-
it, and these could be strengthened. A series of offerings would have to be made and the
child would be brought into balance once more.
“Why did you hold your hand on the boy’s forehead and stomach?” I asked. “Were you
checking for fever?”
“I was check his brain,” Ketut said. “To see if he had evil spirits in his mind.”
“What kind of evil spirits?”
“Liss,” he said. “I am Balinese. I believe from black magic. I believe evil spirits come out
rivers and hurt people.”
“Did the boy have evil spirits?”
“No. He is only sick in his birthday. His family will make sacrifice. This will be OK. And you,
Liss? You are practice Balinese meditation every night? Keep mind and heart clean?”
“Every night,” I promised.
“You learn to smile even in your liver?”
“Even in my liver, Ketut. Big smile in my liver.”
“Good. This smile will make you beautiful woman. This will give you power of to be very
pretty. You can use this power—pretty power!—to get what you want in life.”
“Pretty power!” I repeat the phrase, loving it. Like a meditating Barbie. “I want pretty
power!”