Perhaps asides from “Halo terrrrrransport…!”, “Ka kija to?” is one of the most common phrases a Balinese will fire at you. It is a contraction of the words, “Lakar kija ento?” You may remember in the last issue when I talked about Pak Wayan going out and no one in his family knowing where he had gone-well this may provide a little more insight ….
When a Balinese asks you where you’re going - Ka kija? ,Kija to, Kija ne? or any other possible combination of these words - it may sound like they really care, that they are emphatically concerned about your personal life and your next port of call; but this is actually as much a pleasantry as “Gidday mate-howz it hangin’?” is to your average Ozzie bloke.
It may be a tad disconcerting, or, for the linguistically compromised, challenging to come up with a split-second answer without sounding forced, so I suggest just doing what most locals do and keep it really vague. A stock answer is often a simple direction: ngajanan (mountainwards), ngelodan (seawards), nganginan (to where the sun rises), or ngauhan (to where the sun sets). Outsiders may not realise how much the kaja-kelod directions are used in everyday life. In fact they are a classic characteristic of ‘Balinese-ness’.
Sometimes the direction can actually be a specific place if it is used frequently enough. For example nganginan could esoterically meaning ‘next-door’ or ‘the beach’. Of course there are those people who say exactly where they’re going but most people don’t get too specific.
There are people who say that you know you’ve mastered a language when you dream in it; others reckon it’s when you can tell jokes in it. I can’t even tell a decent joke in English; but I knew that my Balinese was moving up in the world when I could spurt out a direction without thinking, even if I was heading the wrong way ….
