“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 ba-
bies 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 hu-
man 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 him walk
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.
nora
(Nora)
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