Hundreds of young men clad in black and white checkered sarongs raise the ends of long rough-hewn wooden poles. Intertwining them high in the air creates tall unstable tipi-like structures. This ritual, Mekotek, is reserved to the single village of Munggu, near the beach in southwest Bali.
Mekotek takes place on Kuningan, the final day of Bali’s ten-day Siwa Buddha festival, which begins with Galungan day, welcoming ancestors back into the homes of the Balinese – and celebrating the victory of dharma over adharma. Or in Western terms, the victory of good over evil. The event is “annual”, but with the 210-day-long Balinese calendar, each Western decade provides 17 Mekotek rituals, never at the same Western calendar dates.
Before joining their mock combats, these teams of young men are blessed with tirta, the familiar Balinese holy water. Their checkered sarongs – in the traditional black and white poleng motif – are magical, offering protection. Even stone statues in Bali often don these poleng cloth garments.
The combatants’ reverse tug-of-war melees push at the opposing pyramid of sticks and men, until one side overwhelms the other and drives the poles, and often the people, to the ground. If the crowd pushing doesn’t produce fast results, dauntless young men will often climb the unstable moving pyramids and use their leveraged body weight to tip the scales [of the Gods] in their favour.
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Copyright 2019: The Mouse & The Elephant, Daniel S. Vaughn.