EVERYDAY LIFE IN BALI

THE HOUSE

In Belaluan everybody was up even before the first rays of the sun outlined the jagged tops of the coconut palms, awakened by the raucous crowings of the fighting cocks. In the indigo semidarkness of the dawn the women were busily sweeping the yard and bringing water from the village spring. The first thought, the men was for their pets; to line up the bell-shaped cages of the fighting cocks out on the road by the gate so that the rooste might “ amuse themselves watching people go by.”

The cages of the cooing doves were strung up on high poles for them 1 enjoy the morning air and the sunshine, and the flocks of pigeon trained to fly in circles over the house, were released for the morning exercise. As protection from birds of prey, they ha small brass bells around their necks that produced various humming sounds as they flew round and round until they tired, when they came down to be fed.

After a refreshing bath the men started for the fields without breakfast, taking along a snack - rice boiled inside of little diamond-shaped containers of palm-leaf called ketipat. More substantial food was taken to them later if they had to remain the fields all day, but they returned at noon for lunch if there was not much work or if the sawas were near.

Meanwhile the women fetched sheaves of unhusked rice from the granary, spread the on the ground to dry in the sun, filled the gebah - the large water basin in the kitchen - and started the fire for the day's cookin A kitchen is a simple roof of coarse thatch supported by preside over the kitchen. It is called brahma, not the supreme ' lord of the Hindus, but simply meaning " fire," an animistic fir egod.

The food that Balinese gourmets eat at festivals is as elaborate as any in the world and will be described later in detail, but the daily meal is extremely simple. A mound of boiled cold rice with salt and chili-pepper was sufficient, our house-boy Dog claimed, to keep body and soul together for a Balinese like himself. The daily diet of Gusti and his noble family was the same cold white rice (nasi, a synonym for food in general) , helped, however, by a side dish of vegetables chopped together with a dozen or so of spices, aromatics, grated coconut and the hottest chili-pepper in the world.

Gusti's wives did the cooking; Siloh Biang prepared the rice while Sagung scraped coconut in a kikian, a board bristling with little iron points, chopped the ingredients for the sauce, or fried them in coconut oil in an iron pan (pengorengan) . Some eat their daily rice simply boiled in a clay pot, but in our household they preferred it steamed; they washed the grain repeatedly until the waters lost their milky colour and came out transparent, boiled it for a while, and when it was half done put it into a funnelshaped basket (kukusan) covered with a heavy clay lid (kekeb) and steamed the whole over a special pot (dangdang) of boiling water.

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