Day 68: Ashes to Ashes
We all begin life swimming in water. The elements attending our bodies’ final rest depend on chance and custom. In the west, we commend our corpses to the earth. Some favor burial at sea, a neat symmetry with birth.
In Bali the dead are bathed in flame. Only the ashes are given to the ocean.
Meditasi
The guest house we stayed at in Amed is semi-famous. Lonely Planet recommends it. It’s highly-reated on TripAdvisor. Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame recommends it.
They recommend it not because it’s a typical guest house but because of its idiosyncrasies: it’s in the poorer Aas1 end of Amed. There’s no Internet nor even cell signal. The design of the bungalows is unique and the restaurant is filled with posters intended to coax you to chill out and laugh while doing so.
It’s the kind of place you’d expect to me one person’s vision rather than a group effort. So it is. Meditasi‘s owner and driving force is Smiling Buddha. Though I saw his real name from the business license he displays, everyone knows him by his monicker. And part of his charm is his friendliness and his gift of making his guest feel part of the place, temporarily part of the community.
For a new days and nights we’d heard chanting up in the hills while staying at Meditasi. Chanting accompanied by gamelan playing. When Melissa asked what this was about, Smiling Buddha told us that a local woman (here things get sketchy — we later heard that it was a local man, I Wayan Diarma) had died and that was her (his!) funeral. The cremation ceremony (Ngaben) would conclude the following day.
Would we like to come?
Yes. Yes we would. Lore has it that if you get a chance to visit any Balinese ceremony, the cremation is the one to see. And we both have un-hidden morbid streaks, so this was perfect. So perfect that it was the final straw that caused Melissa to extend her stay for just a couple more days…
Funeral
The funeral itself had been going on for 3 nights before the cremation. It’s a marathon affair: we heard constant chanting. During our meals. At the beach. Waking in the middle of the night. The chanted prayers and other-worldly gamelan music would drift down to our bungalows. Though we didn’t observe it, the deceased’s body would have been lying in its bed for the whole time. As if just sleeping.
We later learned from bleary-eyed folks at the funeral that this marathon is kept up with the help of Arak. Members of the family and the wider community work in shifts.
By the end of this chanting phase, the religious aspect of the death is largely complete. The body is now just an empty vessel to be burned along with it’s former owner’s possessions. This view presumably accounts for the fact that having the whole community watch the cremation — including random tourists taking photos — causes no evident discomfort. It’s hard to imagine that kind of ease even in western open-casket ceremonies where the body is viewed.
Procession
We began by getting dressed appropriately for the ceremony. This involved a sarong for both of us and an udeng headband for me. Then we wait at the side of the road for the procession to pass by.
When it does, it’s a flood of people. It begins with the deceased’s possessions and various offerings being carried down the mountain road on people’s heads. Then the body itself, carried in a liter. Then the swell of the community washed around and began surging to the beach. A gamelan group played the whole way. We walked about a kilometer away in the hot sun.
There’s a video of the last part of the procession [here][fb-precession-video].
Cremation
When we arrived, everyone settled into a comfortable seat. The personal effects of the deceased were laid on the ground and the body was toured around the effects three times, counterclockwise before being placed in an open metal box. It was placed onto rebar stays to keep it above the ground.
The rest of the crowd sat around. They observed the set up almost casually. Not focused and definitely not solemnly.
After a short blessing and some rituals involving white cloth, the man in charge of the blowtorches — we’d heard he gets 1.3M IRP per cremation — got to work setting them up. Without any speeches, eulogies, or hymns or anything to mark the event, the torches were turned on.
The torches were incredibly powerful. Flamethrowers really. They rendered the body to bones within half an hour. I wasn’t sure what to expect in a cremation here, whether any part of the body would be visible. Before the immolation began, there was just a body wrapped in a sheet with possessions piled upon it. As it proceeded the objects were burnt. The sheet was burnt. Then the flesh underneath showed its blackened skin to the bright tropical sun one last time.
At that point it was just a fiery black mass. But the mass slowly shrank down to the bones underneath, falling off as ashes. After about 15 minutes, the skull and ribcage were naked to the flames, a brilliant white in the fire. So white they reminded me a bit of Terminator II.
The burning continued. Eventually the skull broke apart and pieces were retrieved, dowsed in water and presented to the family. As that mini-ceremony took place, the hips and lower spine were exposed to the flame.
Shockingly quickly, it was over, only ashes and the larger bones remained. These were scooped up and made ready for the sea. Before heading to the water, we all sat down in a rough circle with the family at the center. We we blessed with holy water and prayed for a bit.
Sea
With prayers done the whole congregation decamped maybe 100m down the beach. This time the family was separated out on a small spit of stony beach to commend the final pieces of their relative to the sea while everyone else sat in the shade further up the shore.
This part was perhaps the most remarkable. As the obligations wound down, the joking and laughter began. Young (and not so young) adults were goosing each other. Most everyone seemed relieved and happy.
The crowd quickly dispersed. The family climbed into a truck and set off back up the mountain. No doubt to sleep away the effects of 3 night’s Arak-fueled chanting and preparation.
Throughout the ceremony, there was genuine sadness. But only from the immediate family. There was no forced solemnity amongst the rest of the attendees, the community. They were there as witnesses, not to commiserate with crocodile tears. Indeed the most remarkable thing about the ceremony was the range of emotions, from faintly sadness to practical joking. Nobody was hushed. No one cowed to pay dour respect. It was an incredibly honest event, as free of unnecessary coverings as the deceased was.
Here are the pictures. Note: I’ve omitted the truly graphic ones. If you’re curious about them, message me.
Carrying the Offerings
The offerings for the cremation ceremony get carried down to the beach.
The Body
The body is carried down to the beach on a liter.
White Sheets
Part of the ritual involved raising these white sheets into the air.
Watching the Burning
Onlookers watch the lighting of the pyre.
The Priest
The priest says a very few words and the the fire is lit.
The First Few Flames
The first few flames consume the effects and the body of I Wayan Diarma.
The Fire Gets Going
The fire gets going
Bone Shards
The bone shards are collected from the skull and passed out to the family.
The Rebar is Hammered Back into Shape
The rebar holding the body gets so hot it sags. The Burner holds it with pliers and hammers it back into shape.
Closing Prayers
We all sit in final prayers before the remains are commended to the sea.
The Final Journey of the Body
The remains are waked counterclockwise around the pyre 3 times before they go to the ocean.
One Last Duty
The family prepared the final goodbye.
Relatives
This lady passed out with presumed grief. We never figured out her relation to the decreased.
Another relative. At turns he displayed every possible emotion from sadness to joking to joy and back to sadness.
Not every member of the family is mournful.
