Maximos' Blog

The Pig and the Cockfight

Penestanan Kelod   was on the route of a guided walk conceived to illustrate the main elements of Balinese village life.  From the mid 1980s until 2002 we escorted a regular stream of students through Penestanan.  This was also Wayan’s village, it became familiar territory.

Often at the end of each working day someone would drive Wayan home to her village.  In the rapidly darkening early evening she was reluctant to climb up into the kijang until we’d turned around. Our Ubud office was off a narrow road near the cremation ground and graveyard so this wasteland was our turning circle. Like most Balinese people she had a clear sense of Nis Kala, the unseen world.  Here in the graveyard bodies lay in shallow graves waiting cremation, this was the domain of Dewi Durga and not a safe place after dark.

Unusually Wayan lived in her father’s household.  Balinese households, organized around kitchens, are generally within family compounds.   A compound might contain several families.  People in Balinese compounds are related through the male line, as inheritance is patrilineal. Sons bring wives in and daughters marry out.

Wayan hadn’t moved to her husband’s household. Such variations in the basic rules were explained using the principle of desa-kala-patra.  This translated as place-time-situation or identity.  In short it meant there was a certain local autonomy and that adjustments were possible to apparently strict customary rules provided certain compensatory arrangements were made.  In Wayan’s compound the only logic I could see to these arrangements was that her husband came from the poorer northern part of the island where employment was hard to find. Penestanan was close to the tourist area of Ubud. If they’d moved north according to the custom they’d have had little work. Precisely what compensatory arrangements had been made I’m not certain but I suspect her husband had to pay a small fee to the local banjar   in Penestanan.

Sixty six people lived in Wayan’s compound. There were about six kitchens, pig pens at the rear and one clean water tap at the front of the block providing potable water at certain hours of the day. All other clean water had to be carted from a spring by women.  They had a capacity to carry great loads on their heads.  Often the women did their washing in the river or at a pancuran (spring), people also used the river for bathing and toileting.  There was active tuberculosis in the compound and scant appreciation of the world of microorganisms.

Wayan had a pig. We bought it for her. Women often raised pigs, it was an excellent way of making a little extra money.  Ironically, in such a patrilineal society women were very much in control of traditional commerce. Women were responsible for selling the rice crop and any other fruits or vegetables that were excess to family needs and available for sale.  Women ran markets and were experts on the prices of everything.  They were excellent bargainers.  Men were regarded as somewhat deficient when it came to the everyday commerce of the local produce market, this was a woman’s domain.

It was difficult to know how to compensate Wayan for all of her service. It wasn’t possible to start paying her substantially more than the going rate for cook, housekeeper and office assistant.  Paying too much was just as likely to end up with her being in trouble because of the jealousy   it could engender within her wider family in the compound. There could be a lot of pressure for additional funds from within the extended family if she was deemed too well heeled. A blind eye was turned to the slight skimming of the domestic budget. She was often given small items of gold jewellery and, of course, the pig.

Gifts were assessed on an invisible scale that ranged from refined to vulgar.  If something was refined it was halus, if it was vulgar it was kasar.  Everything could be located on this scale.  Everyday objects were located according to their capacity for transformation.  So, it was quite halus to give someone money or gold as these were both highly liquid assets and could be used in a multitude of ways, giving someone cooked food was kasar as it had a just one purpose. Giving Wayan gold jewellery to supplement her income was not only halus but it was also an asset that was protected in the patrilineal system.  She could keep it and cash it in when and if she wanted.  Cashing it was easy as every substantial market place had a gold merchant. Giving her a pig was an experiment but it seemed to work, the pig was thriving.  We often asked after it.

The compound was always full of people, people were always coming and going, this was above all else a social place.  On the surface interactions were amicable enough but beneath the surface there was a complex unseen world of disputation, jealousy and rivalry.  Such complexity was extended by the practice of first cousin marriage and polygamy.  The name of the village, Penestanan, meant black magic in Balinese and provided a clear indication of the way many disputes were settled, within the unseen world.

I didn’t dismiss the significance of the unseen world, at first I recognized that even myths have a power when they are believed. Later I came to respect the Balinese concern for the unseen world. For me there was but one supreme power in the unseen world for the Balinese it was far more complex.  Their world comprised a hierarchy of spiritual entities and practices, also what constituted the unseen world for the Balinese wasn’t merely the spiritual domain it also included elements that for me had a rational and scientific explanation.  In this final category  was the microscopic world of bacteria and parasites.  I’d long learned to deal with the microecology of this world.  I had quite strict non-negotiable rules, there could be no desa-kala-patra in this realm.  In the Balinese world things weren’t this clear cut at all.

One day Wayan’s pig, now fully grown, became sick there was no possibility of bringing in the vet, it just wasn’t worth it.  We were disappointed about the pig, but we thought, if it dies we’ll just have to buy her a new one, besides this was an interesting time in the village as it was the anniversary of the most important temple, so no one dwelt on the problem too much.

I called Wayan’s father, bapak or father. He was a genial old man at times, at other times he seemed self absorbed and depressive. When there was an important event on his mood invariably lifted and he was swept away by the occasion. Many Balinese people are like this, their moods greatly influenced by the religious and spiritual calendar.  This big temple ceremony had him in a particularly buoyant mood.

Bapak was determined to make the most of this odalan. “Mari, kita ke Pura, ada tajen”, he said, motioning for me to follow.

Now while I’d have had profound reservations about such a request in Australia, here it was common practice to go to cockfights, or tajen, as the Balinese called them.  So, what bapak was doing was inviting me to attend the cockfight at the temple, this was a very halus gesture as there was a spiritual purpose.

Understanding the setting for these events is the only way to begin making sense of them.  For starters a Balinese temple comprises three parts, the Jaba or outer courtyard, the Jaba Tengah middle courtyard and the Jeroan or inner courtyard.  We walked into the Jaba. Here all manner of distractions and entertainments occur at the time of big temple festivals.  There are ice cream and fairy floss stands, helium filled balloons, plastic toys and trinkets and stalls selling traditional Balinese food.  Many of the hawkers that offer their wares at these events do the circuit. As there are some 1400 major temples in Bali there’s lots of work for hawkers.

Cockfights aren’t actually held inside the part of the temple devoted to worship, they are held in the profane outer courtyard of the temple.  The outer courtyard in this case was the open space outside the temple.  To one side was a large permanent pavilion or bale and along the other two sides were stalls.  The cockfight was taking place in the middle where a ring of men shouted out the odds and called for bets.  In the centre of the ring the owners of the two cocks, stroked and preened their birds, pulling their neck feathers, stirring them up before the contest began.

I placed two bets, won about $1.20, and then stepped back out of the tight intense circle.  It was important to be sociable and respect the invitation I’d been given but I didn’t like cockfights even though I found the human spectacle fascinating.  These events were charged with subdued macho intensity that was seldom encountered elsewhere. Big money often changed hands and when the cash ran out, the title deeds to land were used to borrow more.  Wayan’s uncle had made a lot of money this way.  I suspected that even Wayan’s father had fallen victim as he was no longer able to gamble.

To the outsider, such vulgar and violent blood sport must seem entirely inappropriate for a religious event.  In the Balinese world it’s essential that blood be spilled on the profane part of the temple lands prior to these events.  Such a sacrifice is intended to appease a variety of malign unseen entities that might otherwise disrupt preparations or worshippers coming to bring offerings and to pray, if their cravings for fresh blood go unsatiated. Blood has the spiritual essence of the creature that spills it and in the unseen world it’s the essence of things that’s important. Still more elaborate measures were taken to appease other higher order entities that might just happen to be passing.

On this day many cocks shed their blood.

Bapak motioned and said”Mari, kita makan”, “Come let’s go and eat’.

I followed him to a stall at the far end of the open space,  Here a succulent and crisp pig carcass was being slowly portioned out to customers.  Bapak placed an order and we were given plates of food. I was simply handed a plate piled high with rice, roast pig and crackling, sambal and lawar.  It looked delicious, I had just one reservation, the lawar.  Now lawar is a fine food and I often ate white lawar but this one was red and I new what this meant, it had been prepared with raw pigs blood.

Learning about lawar is essential if one wants to survive the microecology.  I’d only once made the mistake of eating lawar at a wedding.  I’d thought the brightly coloured vegetable dish must have been coloured with tomato but to my surprise it had a metallic salty taste.  Enquiries revealed that it had been made from raw ducks blood.  Pig’s blood was definitely beyond the pale.  In my mind there were good reasons why Jews and Muslims didn’t eat pork.  Pig physiology was remarkably similar to our own and it seemed that clean pork was sometimes difficult to find, so on purely pragmatic grounds one needed to be cautious about eating it.

I deftly flicked the lawar away from my rice, establishing a quarantine line, some rapid border protection. As I did so I had visions of unseen armies of parasites and bacteria marching across the surface of the rice onto pristine territory untainted with pigs blood where they might set up camp and colonise new territory. Not to eat would be to give profound offence as it was a major festival and bapak was paying from his meager income.  I ate heartily, pushing my concerns about the microcosm well beneath my consciousness.  The pork was delicious, the crackling was excellent, the sambal intensely hot.

Placing the plate back on the counter I thanked bapak for the meal and complimented the stall holder on the quality of the food.  As we stepped away from the stall bapak confided,

“The pork was delicious, wasn’t it? That was the sick pig, it was best for us to sell it”.