By PHIL JARRATT
FEASTING on the buffet at our friend Mark Keatinge’s tooth filing ceremony (mesangih) this week, I suddenly noticed that of the small handful of bules, or Westerners present at this most Balinese of rituals, I was probably the youngest.
How times have changed. Back in the days before electricity and refrigeration the only old white people you ever saw were the odd earnest Dutch folk in khakis and pith helmets tracing their colonial heritage. Now we’re everywhere, still trying to surf like kids, eking out the pensioner years in backstreet villas, getting nipped and tucked for next to nothing and emerging from Dr Rudi’s dental clinic with smiles whiter than Warney’s.
Which brings me back to Mark’s teeth filing. It’s more than 40 years now since he skippered a dubious and very leaky boat from Onslow, WA, and washed up on Bali’s shore (literally) with first mate Michael White, a young architecture student from Sydney who subsequently changed his name to Made Wijaya and became Bali’s most famous landscape designer, responsible for the exquisite gardens of the Oberoi, Bali Hyatt and Four Seasons Jimbaran hotels.
Mark never felt the need to change his name, but he’s become every bit as Balinese as his old shipmate, a respected elder at his wife’s family’s banjar, presiding over funerals and cremations when not attending to his highly successful business building and flat-packing wooden houses for clients like Sir Richard Branson.
But in 22 years of wedded bliss with the lovely Ketut, he had never had his teeth filed, so he took the opportunity to perform the coming of age rites with his two teenage daughters this week. Although its roots derive from Bali’s animist culture, the ceremony has been absorbed into the Hindu Dharma.
These days it is largely symbolic, with a priest making only a few passes with a sterilised file, but it is taken no less seriously or reverently.
The ceremony is symbolic of coming of age, a transition from animal to human represented by the filing of the sharp canines, and the control of the six human evils – desire, greed, anger, intoxication or being under the influence of strong emotion, confusion and jealousy.
While Mark was a bit long in the tooth (no pun intended) to be coming of age, the rules about this are a bit fuzzy, since many Balinese families hold off on the expensive ceremony and party until they can have a group filing.
The dressing of the subjects in traditional adornments begins long before dawn, and the filing is usually done with the rising of the sun. Then family, close friends and neighbours gather within the elaborately-decorated family compound for a celebration that lasts all day, but again, conceding to the pressures of the modern world, most people drop in for only a couple of hours, to chat, eat and listen to the soothing music of the gender wayang.
Alcohol plays no part in the celebration, but in another thoughtful concession, Mark, resplendent in a red brocade jacket and matching crown, brought a tray full of icy cold Bintang beers over to the weary old expats.
Absolutely nothing happened at Mark Keatinge’s tooth filing celebration, and yet I came away from the compound in the heat of the early afternoon feeling relaxed, happy and totally at peace with the world. I guess I felt a little bit Balinese.
World’s oldest backpackers
By the time you read this we will be backpacking up the Malay Peninsula, travelling on the old colonial rail lines and island-hopping on local ferries. After Singapore, I’ve not made one hotel booking. I have this strange yearning to go off the grid, to travel spontaneously and be constantly surprised. It must be another weird old guy thing, but I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to it.
One thing that is scheduled is a night or two in Johor Bahru with our old Noosa mate and colleague Di Pickering, who with husband John has been working at the new Pinewood film studios.
Six months ago in Bali, Di loaned us a wonderful novel called Garden Of The Evening Mists by Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng, who so successfully brought to life the cool air and lush fields of the Cameron Highlands that I’ve been longing to get there ever since.
The Pickerings tell us that there is absolutely nothing to do in JB, but that the crab is delicious, so there goes next week’s calorie counting.
