Pain: Cockfight in Bali

Jeff Meller

20 Nov. 13

545 words

The last thought of the fighting cock was: "One minute – champ; the next minute - dinner."

Sauntering down a serene gung, an alley, with morning incense lingering around open doorways, we hear the clamor of voices and gongs echoing from the other side of a high, limestone wall. The wall is built of square blocks, mined from what had been a coral reef, embedded with ancient seashells and marine life.

We follow the sounds to an open-air compound with a hundred squatting Balinese men in a raucous circle. They are sweating in the tropical heat, yelling unintelligibly in Bahasa, another of the 6,500 world languages we don’t speak. During the workweek the men wear pants; today they are wearing traditional sarongs.

The circle is celebrating a venerable, if illegal, Balinese pastime. Cockfighting is central to Balinese culture, a social relief valve for tension in a rigid, hierarchical society. The blood sport contrasts unexpectedly with otherwise aesthetic Balinese society in which the highest castes are dancers, musicians, poets and wood cavers; hedge fund managers dwell in the social netherworld.

The yelling, which first seized our attention, is partisans calling: “five on the spotted, white,” “four on the speckled.”

In the center of the circle of men a white circle 20 feet across is painted in chalk on the dirt floor. Two handlers parade around the circle showing off their cocks, the anthropologist Clifford Geertz reports that the double entendre is the same in Balinese as in English, to encourage betting. The cocks are the size of chickens except that special diets and training produce legs which are longer and more muscular. They display the ornate plumage of an Edwardian dowager sailing down Pall Mall in her “murderous millinery.”

The fighting weapons are a 3 inch long, thin razor lashed with red string to the rear of one leg.  Legend has it that blades are sharpened only during an eclipse and should be kept out of sight of women. From the high deference accorded to the blade by the man affixing them, we infer that even a slight mishandling will slash a finger instantly to the bone.

The two handlers step into the center of the ring holding their cocks face to face. To provoke the birds, red pepper is stuffed up their butts. The handlers step back, release the birds. The fight begins, the crowd quietens to semi-religious reverence.

The cocks do not tear at each other haphazardly. There is abundant beating of wings and squawking. But more impressively these two animals, who have only an ounce of bird brain, act with the trained, military nobility of samurai warriors. They psych their opponent, circle patiently looking for an opening, parry and feint, until finally one leaps on the other in a torrent of flapping and clawing and neatly draws the razor across his adversary’s throat, exactly as Kurasawa would have directed. The fight lasts 30 seconds.

If a cock can be such a calculating combatant, maybe he is capable of more profound introspection than we give him credit for. Perhaps his last thought might progress along the following lines: "One minute – champ; the next minute - dinner."

- 30 -

Source: “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” Clifford Geertz in The Interpretation of Cultures.

Humor - Arriving in India

 Jeff Meller

13 Nov 13

Words: got a little carried away

Travellers in Indian international air terminals resemble Napoleon’s routed army in retreat from Moscow.

International flights depart and arrive between midnight and 3 a.m. because India is only a way station on longer flights between Europe and other Asian destinations. Madeleine and Genevieve  Meller, 4 and 1 respectively, wail their puzzlement at being awakened in the middle of the night. My wife, Christine, and I suppress our own wooly-headedness and try in vain to soothe the girls.

The Meller family trudges, bleary-eyed and disheveled, into the lobby of the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi at 1 a.m. Indian Standard Time. Indian Standard Time is a half-hour different from all other time zones around the world, but that’s a tale for another day.

The lobby is festooned with traditional Indian designs fashioned from ropes of red and yellow marigold flowers. Rajasthani musicians serenade travellers with classic ballads of the desert. But these welcoming gestures are drowned beneath the nose-crinkling, bitter odor of paan (beetle nut juice), which airport workers spit in any corner where they think the red stains won’t be noticed by supervisors. The lavatories exude a gagging perfume of urine and disinfectant.

It takes a painful hour to grind through immigration and a second cruel hour for baggage to arrive. Airline baggage unloading, like much else in India, is accomplished according to the enigmatic tempo of fate: airline bags arrive when fate says they will arrive.

To pass the time we tramp drearily round and round the immobile baggage carousel. The carousel is not revolving because the power is off; the power is off because the electric utility has run out of coal; the utility is out of coal because the coal mine is flooded; the coal mine is flooded because there is no electricity to operate the water pumps; there is no electricity to operate the pumps because fate dictates when the pumps will operate.

When our bags appear I expect to be released from arrival purgatory. But the State Bank of India, the biggest bank in the country, inflicts one last hour of torment converting a paltry quantity of US dollars into half inch blocks of rupee notes, each block fastened with a giant, steel staple through the batch of bills. The delay is caused by the teller, a forlorn, government bureaucrat in neatly pressed polyester clothing, filling out forms in triplicate using carbon paper; you may have seen carbon paper in black and white Hollywood movies, perhaps starring Katherine Hepburn as an alluring yet highly competent  secretary. When the apprehensive teller finally gives us our money, I point out that 1,000 rupees is missing. Resignedly he hands over the balance, his hopes for a self-conferred gratuity dashed.

Finally we emerge from the terminal into the eye-watering miasma of a Delhi winter night. A thermal inversion, where temperature increases with altitude, traps close to the ground cold air condensing from the Great Thar Desert, acrid coal smoke from a power plant, mixed with the sweet smell of millions of dung fires.

We endure a gauntlet of touting taxi-wallahs soliciting our trade in Hindi, Punjabi and English. They are as abundant and predatory as maggots on the carcass of a deceased bovine which has suspended in perpetuity its contribution to the dung fires.

A dilapidated 35-year-old Hindustan Ambassador, a vehicle manufactured unchanged in India since 1958, clatters to the curb. The Ambassador is long since out of production everywhere in the former British Empire. It now can be seen only in two places: the Antique Transportation Department of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the streets of New Delhi.

We try to enter the car. None of the door handles works from the outside. The ponderous Sikh driver in a purple turban demonstrates surprising, practiced agility by opening them all quickly in succession from the inside. I climb in; the car smells musty. I try to put down the windows to let in what passes for fresh air, but the cranks don't work. The Sikh has an assistant who wears a gray, wool scarf wrapped around his shoulders and face against the winter chill. Like that other mainstay of the transport fleet, the Boeing 737, each taxi has a two man crew: one man to drive and the other to lower the flag on the mechanical taxi meter; you may have seen mechanical taxi meters in black and white Hollywood movies, perhaps starring Spencer Tracy trying in vain to resist the secretarial competence of Katherine Hepburn.

The driver is eager to show off the latent horsepower under the hood of his vintage chariot. He guns the engine, grinding rapidly through the gears. The Ambassador races out of the airport parking lot at top speed - 45 miles per hour - to our destination, the airport hotel, 45 seconds down the road.

The sign announces: "Centaur Hotel.” Beneath the name it proudly proclaims “Owned and Operated by the Government of India.” For what it is worth, the Government also owns and operates the airport through which we just have been welcomed.

Dubiously I register. Were I not so tired, I might notice the splendid lobby crafted from the same Makrana white-mottled marble used in the Taj Mahal, marble initially formed as limestone on the ocean floor then re-formed, in the never-ending tectonic ballet, by heat and pressure into metamorphic rock. But I am too tired to notice.

Christine asks for a bottle of cold beer to celebrate our arrival. I ask for a crib for baby Genevieve so she does not fall out of bed.

“Beer – ees not posseeble,” the receptionist informs Christine. "Eat ees a dry day in Deeli because of Hindoo festeeval. Dee night manager weell try to do the needful."

And a crib for baby Genevieve?  “Yes, yes,” the receptionist assures us.

After half an hour an aged porter dodders into our room with a thirst-quenching quart of Rosy Pelican Lager and two glasses. Rosy Pelican never quenched thirst so refreshingly, except when it was not served lukewarm.

I remind about the crib. "Ji hain," the porter replies – “yes.” “Yes” is the unequivocal answer to every question in India, regardless of whether or not the request can be honored. The crib does not arrive.

But while waiting, the power goes off.

Fortunately, Christine and I carry tiny flash lights when we travel. We use them now to find the bathroom and our toothbrushes. I twist the left hand faucet on; only scalding hot water sputters from the tap. I twist the right hand faucet; again only scalding hot water comes from the tap.

We give up on water and rinse our lightly-brushed teeth by swilling Rosy Pelican Lager. It is the girls’ first beer, a couple of decades below legal drinking age.

At 4:45 a.m. we lay down to sleep and dream, not without a little anxiety, about tomorrow, the first day in our new home.

-       30 -

Sources:

None.

First Person/Third Person - Learning to Scull

Jeff Meller

6 Nov 13

342; 344 words

First Person

“Have you ever rowed a row boat?” I ask Mark Dribble, 50, as we climb the ramp from the wide, wooden dock to the classic sculling boathouse. The welcome cadence of clack-thwack, clack-thwack, clack-thwack of oars rotating in oarlocks rises from shells passing on the river.

“Sure, 40 years ago in summer camp,” Mark confirms.

“A racing shell and row boat are the same idea,” I explain. Only the technique is a little different.

Mark and I tramp back down the ramp. We each carry on one shoulder a pair of lightweight, fiberglass oars with blue and white blades.

As we hike back up the ramp for a second time to get our boats I suggest, “Why don’t you try a C-class boat. It’s relatively stable – about 25 feet long and 35 pounds. You won’t tip over.”

“Sounds fine,” says Mark, examining the red hull molded from carbon fiber and Kevlar, “but even this boat looks pretty skinny.”

We set the boat in the river. Mark surveys the placid black water reflecting upside down the yellow-orange maple leaves on a chilly, but sunny, autumn afternoon. “How cold is the water in November?” he asks pensively.

“Probably about 50 degrees,” I reply.

I guide Mark through the pre-launch routine of sliding the oars into the oarlocks, stepping into the boat, and tying his feet into the fixed shoes.

“How does it feel?” I ask.

“Fine,” Mark says, rocking tentatively from side to side to test his balance.

I grab the shoreward oar blade, push the boat laterally away from the dock and say, “Now take your time and row upstream.”

Mark flails in an unsynchronized fashion, rowing the air as much as the water, but makes gradual progress. “Everyone starts like this,” I call to reassure him.

He disappears around the bend. I hop into another boat and row quickly to catch-up. As I round the bend I see Mark’s boat, but no rower. Mark is bobbing in the water hanging on to his boat.

“I thought you said this thing wouldn’t flip,” he splutters.

Third Person

“Have you ever rowed a row boat?” the instructor asks Mark Dribble, 50, as they climb the ramp from the wide, wooden dock to the classic sculling boathouse. The welcome cadence of clack-thwack, clack-thwack, clack-thwack of oars rotating in oarlocks rises from shells passing on the river.

“Sure, 40 years ago in summer camp,” Mark confirms.

“A racing shell and row boat are the same idea,” the instructor, Craig Sullivan, 64, explains. Only the technique is a little different.

They tramp back down the ramp. Each carries on one shoulder a pair of lightweight, fiberglass oars with blue and white blades.

As they hike back up the ramp for a second time to get their boats Craig suggests, “Why don’t you try a C-class boat. It’s relatively stable – about 25 feet long and 35 pounds. You won’t tip over.”

“Sounds fine,” says Mark, examining the red hull molded from carbon fiber and Kevlar, “but even this boat looks pretty skinny.”

They set the boat in the river. Mark surveys the placid black water reflecting upside down the yellow-orange maple leaves on a chilly, but sunny, autumn afternoon. “How cold is the water in November?” he asks pensively.

“Probably about 50 degrees,” Craig replies.

Craig guides Mark through the pre-launch routine of sliding the oars into the oarlocks, stepping into the boat, and tying his feet into the fixed shoes.

“How does it feel?” Craig asks.

“Fine,” Mark says, rocking tentatively from side to side to test his balance.

Craig grabs the shoreward oar blade, pushes the boat laterally away from the dock and says, “Now take your time and row upstream.”

Mark flails in an unsynchronized fashion, rowing the air as much as the water, but makes gradual progress. “Everyone starts like this,” Craig calls to reassure him.

Mark disappears around the bend. Craig hops into another boat and rows quickly to catch-up. As he rounds the bend Craig sees Mark’s boat, but no rower. Mark is bobbing in the water hanging on to his boat.

“I thought you said this thing wouldn’t flip,” he splutters.

- 30 -

Sources:

None.

Book Review - Anthology

Jeff Meller

6 Nov 13

598 words

Victorian explorers in shopping malls, appealing radioactive local foods, helping jilted girlfriends are among the subjects anthologized in “The Best American Travel Writing of 2012.”

The travel writer, David Abel, of The Boston Globe asserts that the first sentence of a travel essay requires the most sweat to craft. It should hook the reader and set the context for the story.

How do the first sentences of three contributions to the 2012 edition of “The Best American Travel Writing” realize this exhausting achievement?

Monte Reel launches his essay “How to Explore Like a Real Victorian Adventurer” with this gripping sentence:

“In Zanzibar, late in 1856, Richard F. Burton and a caravan of porters prepared to venture into the heart of Africa’s interior to search for the source of the Nile.”

Not gripping and not relevant, except to its title.  The essay in fact is about how to explore your local shopping mall.  Reel encourages readers to observe keenly as did, he says, 19^th century explorers like Burton. But Reel does not examine real Victorian adventurers. Rather he reviews Victorian travel “how-to manuals” which told Victorian tourists how to follow comfortably in the footsteps of the real adventurers.

Henry Shukman offers a less prosaic destination than the shopping mall in “Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden.” He endeavors to hook readers with this opening gambit:

“The wild boar is standing 30 or 40 yards away, at the bottom of a grassy bank, staring right at me.”

If the opening is not riveting, Shukman does at least have an intriguing idea: to visit the Chernobyl region a quarter-century after the great meltdown.

Shukman is invited to a meal of local foods inside the 1,100 square mile Exclusion Zone: fish, eggs, tomatoes, bread, berries and vodka. He has been admonished by friends: “don’t eat anything that grows there.” But, he exclaims, “It’s all local and it all looks great;” he “tucks in” like the locals. “Going native” has virtues in meaningful travel. But when one of the natives tells him “Radiation is good for you,” Shukman suspends his cosmopolitan education at his peril.

The last of the three submissions actually follows Abel’s prescription: 

“In the ancient caravan city of Timbuktu, many nights before I encountered the bibliophile or the marabout or comforted the Green Beret’s girlfriend, I was summoned to a rooftop to meet the salt merchant.”

What reader wouldn’t want to learn more about the bibliophile, marabout, girlfriend, and salt merchant in such an exotic locale?

Peter Gwin’s essay, “The Telltale Scribes of Timbuktu,” however, diverts its attention from the captivation tale of the scribes in its digressions on the salt merchant, marabout and girlfriend.

The salt merchant has a friend who wants to sell some parchments; the girlfriend had a two week fling with a Green Beret and hopes he will take her to the US; and the marabout, a Muslim mystic, wants to sell Gwen an amulet to protect him from Al Qaeda for US$ 1,000.

Only the tale of the bibliophile is worth telling. Haidara has a library of 22,000 volumes assembled over 500 years. He points Gwin to the real story: the threat to “many thousands of manuscripts which lie buried in the desert or forgotten in hiding places slowly succumbing to heat, rock and bugs.” Gwin, writing in National Geographic, one of the most esteemed scientific publishers in the world, overlooks this story to tell of the unexceptional charlatans and girlfriend.

If this is “The Best American Travel Writing of 2012,” the reader only may hope for the redemption of American travel writing in 2013.

         - 30 -

Sources:

None.