The Bulbous Balinese Pig and Ceremonial Food Slaughter. Part 2
Food sustains all life—it takes on the ragged garb of raw survival in the Third World, upgrades itself into a source of sustenance in the Second World, and is a personal path to health, well-being, and pleasure in the developed First World. In sharp social and economic contrast, scarce food resources in Bali are primarily diverted towards spirituality: food is the traditional, chosen way to contact, please, and honor the deities. Divinely cognizant of God, duty, and religion, the ritual-driven Balinese celebrate the cyclical thanksgiving feast of Galungan every 210 days. One of the most important holidays on the Balinese religious calendar, Galungan celebrates the universal victory of good over evil (as well as the historical defeat of the bad King Mayadenawa, who had once forbidden the vanquished Bali Aga people from practicing their religion). Fluttering penjor (bamboo offering poles) laden with coconuts and palm leaf ornaments (symbolizing fertility and prosperity) are erected in front of every house gate and temple (the gracefully curving upper end represents both the tail of the auspicious Barong and the peak of the sacred mountain, Gunung Agung). On Galungan, the hungry gods and deified ancestors descend from heaven to the family temples; here they are welcomed, entertained, lavishly fed, and presented with offerings and prayers. Massive, ritually correct Galungan feasts must include a roast pig on the menu. Local Balinese communities make arrangements one month in advance to purchase a male pig: the entire banjar (village association) joins together to buy and pay for the expensive, coveted animal (one prime pig may cost as much as Rp.five million). The requisitioned pigs are mercilessly stuffed into rudimentary, barrel-shaped, portable baskets or carried home from the market “in the arms of the women like babies.” Local trucks can be seen transporting these doomed sacrificial swine down unassuming village streets during peak holiday periods: the portly pink pig is typically lying down on its side inside a woven, bamboo-strip body cage with a bloody nose (the pigs tear their noses trying to get out).
Food preparations for Galungan begin days in advance: bananas are ripened, rice pudding is fermented, cakes are baked, satés are twisted onto sticks, and pigs are slaughtered. The day before Galungan is called Penampahan Galungan (from nampah, “to slaughter an animal”). This is a very bad day to be a chicken, turtle, or (especially) a pig on Bali. Domestic pigs are slaughtered (nampah celeng) at home (by either the men or women of the house) in family compounds all over Bali right in the back yard. The sacrificial meat will be used to make sesaji (small food offerings) such as chopped lawar and satay. In the evening, these pork-based sesaji are placed in courtyards and houses and beside weapons or daily work tools.
A whole pig will be slaughtered whenever there is a ceremony and many mouths to feed (or to sell to a nasi babi guling restaurant or stock the family’s own small warung business). En route from Ubud to Pacung, four Balinese villagers were squatting on their haunches in a picture-perfect rice paddy over a roadside river washing long slabs of fatty white meat. (This is the same river where the community bathes, washes clothes, goes to the toilet, and secures their drinking water.) A recently slaughtered pig was visible lying on its side in the sun on a nearby flatbed truck, being systematically stripped piecemeal of its flesh. There will be a generous ceremonial feast in this simple agricultural village tonight: the finely minced, fresh pork meat and skin will be turned into holy food offerings and sacred ceremonial dishes like pork saté, highly flavored traditional lawar (minutely minced, ground pork combined with dozens of spices), and babi guling (a whole roasted, sweet suckling pig). The whole village will share the special, sudden windfall of always-sought-after meat—which will be consumed in its entirety. All highland rivers in Bali flow down towards the seas: the year-round, often bloody detritus of these offering-filled, sacred village ceremonies washes downstream on these rapidly rushing rivers and is dispersed into the oceans. The fabled white beaches of Bali are the place of last resort/final resting place for the inevitable, piled up, accumulated organic debris and waste materials (and the odd, sacrificial/suspicious animal corpse) generated by thousands of inland ceremonies.
