Mekare-kare — the pandanus war

Mekare-kare, the pandanus war, is the signature rite of Tenganan's month-long ritual season, usually falling in June or July by the village's own calendar. Pairs of young men and boys face off in short, fierce duels: each holds a tight bundle of pandan leaves edged with thorns as a weapon and a coiled rattan shield to parry, and they grapple and rake the spiked leaves across each other's backs while a gamelan selonding plays and an elder referees. The bouts are brief, the cuts are real, and afterwards the wounds are dressed with a turmeric-and-vinegar antiseptic; there is no enmity in it and no revenge — opponents embrace when it is done. The duel is an offering to Indra, the god of war and of the village's founding myth, and a test and display of courage by which Tenganan's young men take their place in the community. It runs alongside other rites of the season, including the ferris-wheel-like turning of unmarried girls on a hand-cranked wooden wheel, and it is bound up with the gringsing cloth the village alone weaves — a double-ikat textile, its threads dyed before weaving over a span of years, worn for the ritual and believed to protect against ill. Tenganan governs itself by an unbroken adat that predates the Hindu kingdoms of Bali, and the pandanus war is the most visible expression of a village that has held its own order for a very long time. Outsiders may watch, but they enter a living, sacred ceremonial space, not a show.