Bali: a partial cremation
Bali: a partial cremation
Each time I have been in Bali, I have attended a cremation, which is an exotic and interesting spectacle described more fully in “The Battle of Bali” in THE OCEAN WAITS.
Yesterday we attended part of the cremation ceremony of either the King of Ubud, an important town not far from here, or three members of his family. I’m not sure which. We heard different stories from different people. The kings no longer have power, but they have prestige and some remaining wealth. Whoever was being cremated, this was the cremation of the year in Bali, and when the procession reached the cremation grounds and thousands tried to crowd in, it became intolerable, and we shoved our way against the flow and left.
The tower in which the body is carried to the field has varying numbers of roofs depending on status. A brahmin has eleven; a noble nine; and a commoner up to seven. The tower we followed had nine, and was huge, at least 60’ or 70’ high, with the body handed across from an inclined ramp at about the 40’ level. This entire structure was carried by hundreds of men nearly a mile through Ubud to the cremation ground. We saw the stumps of substantial trees that had been cut down to clear its way.
Most of the thousands were Balinese. Looking at the crowd, it occurred to me that the young boy I thought had his first intimations of mortality at the cremation I witnessed in 1981, will now be more than thirty years old and have children of his own.
The photos I took of that first cremation are better than those I took yesterday, perhaps because it was on a smaller scale and more approachable. The black and white reproductions in THE OCEAN WAITS do not do the color originals justice, but they were lost with RESURGAM.
The men in the third photograph are members of Bali’s Bomb Squad present because of possible terrorism.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008