cremation

Last week we were informed by Komang, our gardener, that he would like to work next weekend because he had Upacara (ceremony) this week and would like to have a day off.
That day became two days in reality but that is not the point. Through Made, our pembantu (housekeeper), we learned that the ceremony Komang was referring to actually was the cremation of his grandfather who passed away last week, aged 87. I asked Komang if we could attend; it was no problem, on the contrary, we were welcome.

For us, foreigners, there is no specific dress code. The Balinese wear a sarong, women and men. We rented a car and left for Blahbatuh, the village where the cremation would take place. The driver stopped at a small crossing with an improvised traffic sign. ‘Hati hati, ada Upacara’, the sign said, ‘Attention, we have a ceremony’. From a distance we saw a high, colorful tower-like construction, further down the street. A lot of people dressed in white had gathered there. Komang, wearing traditional attire, was at the lookout for us and guided us through a narrow alley to the house where we saw the coffin in a small, decorated pavilion. Chairs were brought and we each were given a bottle of Sprite and a piece of sweet bread. The coffin was covered with a white cloth and surrounded by offerings.  My question about how the body could be kept at home at these temperatures was answered with one word: ‘Formol’.

At the other side of the compound: the sound of traditional songs and recitations. A woman singing, a man reciting what seemed to be Balinese prayers. It sounded horrible and threatening. To me anyway. It made no impression whatsoever on the Balinese people in the compound. They strolled around, greeting people left and right, joking or smoking a cigarette. It looked like a reception rather than a funeral. After what seemed an eternity both was in fact just 45 minutes, the singing stopped and men started to demolish the railing of the pavilion with the coffin. A lot of people approached and were given flowering branches or offerings from the pavilion after which they left the compound, as in a procession, and positioned themselves in front of the colorful tower outside. It was a bizarre cortege, little children as well as elderly people with walking sticks, passed by carrying flowers or small braided baskets. I saw an important man with a ritual spear, held in front of him and other men with roasted ducks or piglets on a stick.
At the end, the coffin was taken from under the cloth, lifted on a multitude of shoulders and carried outside while the music of the gamelan went crescendo.  The coffin was lifted to the top of the tower, using manpower only, and fixed with bands of cloth as secure as possible. The priest and a few men stayed on top of the tower, some 5 meters (17 feet) above the ground. Then the procession started moving. The mobile gamelan orchestra as well. The deceased paid a last visit to his village.
At important crossroads the tower was turned around a few times. The traffic came to a standstill. By turning the tower, and also the coffin around, one hopes to confuse the deceased, thus preventing him from finding his way back home to haunt the living.
The locals calmly wait in their vehicles. No sound of horns, no shouting. Tomorrow might be your Upacara. We were the last to join the procession that went in the direction of the graveyard. Contrary to the Balinese Hindus, Chinese inhabitants of Bali are not cremated but buried in graves covered with colorful tombstones.

The statue of a big black bull was the first thing we saw once arrived at the cremation field.
The bull stood on a bamboo frame and the back was really a big lid that could be taken off.
A big group of men struggled to get the coffin out of the tower and into the bull. The lid was put back on. Fire was set to the decorated tower and the paper flowers, that had decorated the coffin, were thrown into the flames. I expected the bull to be put in the flames also. It did not happen that way. 

Notwithstanding the heath, it was around noun, I felt a shiver when I noticed the gas canisters, partly hidden in the bushes some distance away from the bull…
Two thick hoses, that looked like brown snakes, ran from under the bushes to what seemed to be big high pressure cleaners. The sound of the music increased dramatically when the pressure cleaners suddenly spit fire. It were huge flame throwers. Time has not stood still in Bali and the traditional wood fires have been replaced by devices that make me think of dying people in bunkers on the Atlantic coastline and naked men with beards in Auschwitz.
But of course I am a bulé, a white man with too much imagination and no eye for progress.
Ten years ago a cremation took three to four hours. Nowadays it is over in an hour or so.
Time is money, also in Bali, also in the cremation business. It was macabre.
The bull was gone in seconds and the color of the smoke changed constantly.
After a few minutes only the base, made of green coconut stems, remained. They were placed parallel with a space of around 70cm (2.5ft) between them. That is where the half burnt bones of the deceased ended up, the scorched skull clearly visible.

Willy didn’t see a thing. She was sitting on the ground, safely hidden behind the backs of the spectators. Shivering I presume. The ‘undertakers’, in this case two young men with a piece of cloth tied around their heads, against the blistering heath, put a piece of corrugated iron over the stems, thus creating an oven, open at both ends. They regularly poked in it with long bamboo poles and from time to time one of them lifted up the lid and peeked inside, his hand as a little roof above his eyes. I don’t want to think about what he was controlling in there.
When the gas was turned off, we said goodbye to the family. The ceremony would go on until late at night and part of the ashes would be scattered in the sea near Sanur. The rest would be kept in the house temple.
On the way back home, we told Willy that we also would like to be cremated. She looked at us in disbelief. ‘When my father would be cremated, I would jump after him in the flames!’ she said.
She didn’t know that, until the beginning of the 20th century, the wives of a king indeed jumped in the flames at their husband’s cremation.