EVERYDAY LIFE IN BALI

THE HOUSE

In Den Pasar, where modernism is rampant, many a front porch is embellished with framed photographs of relatives, made by the local Chinese photographer. By the door of Gedog's meten hung I picture of him with his wife and children in ceremonial clothes, violently coloured with anilines, sitting dignified and stiff against a background of stormy clouds, draperies, columns, and balustrades.

The generous photographer had added all sorts of extra jewellery with little dabs of gold paint. I have seen the most amazing objects hanging in the porches of Balinese homes: dried lobsters, painted plates representing the snow-covered Alps, chinese paintings on glass, old electric bulbs filled with water, aquatic plants growing out of them, postal cards of New York skyscrapers, and so forth; objects prized as exotic, rare things, as we prize their discarded textiles and moth-eaten carvings. In one house we found a picture of Queen Wilhelmina; we asked who she was and the quick reply came: “ Oh! itu gouvermen - That is the Government.”

The meten is the sanctuary of the home; here heirlooms are kept and the family's capital is often buried in the earth floor under the bed. Normally the heads of the family sleep in the meten, but being the only building. in which privacy can be secured, they relinquish it to newly-weds or to unmarried girls who need protection. They shut themselves into it at night, but otherwise the entire life of the household is spent outdoors on the porch or in the surrounding open pavilions, each provided with beds for other members of the family.

The other three sides of Gedog's courtyard were occupied by three open pavilions; on the left was the bale tiang sanga, the social parlour and guest house, and two smaller pavilions were on the right (bale sikepat) and back (bale sekenam) where other relatives slept with the children and where the women placed their looms to work. In the lowest part of the land, to wards the sea, were the kitchen (paon) and the granary (lun bung) .

Rice was threshed in a cleared space (tongos nebuk padi) behind the granary. As in every household, there were two small shrines (tugu), one west of the meten, the other in th middle of the courtyard, the pengidjeng perhaps dedicated t the spirit of the land, “ His Excellency the Owner of the Ground “ (Ratu Medrwe Karang) .

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