The power of Men Brayut's legacy remains in Bali

The power of Men Brayut's legacy remains in Bali

By Leslie Dwyer

DENPASAR, Bali (JP):As fact-finding commissions and special
investigations work to uncover the truth behind the past 35 years
of Indonesian history, numerous crimes are being brought to
light.

Those who have felt the pain of violence and oppression and
censorship have started -- sometimes haltingly, sometimes more
openly -- to tell their stories. But in Bali, one victim's tale
has yet to attract the cameras and pens of the press: that of a
woman named Men Brayut.

Men Brayut was, in many ways, an ordinary woman. She was not
the daughter of a king or the wife of a prince. She was not a
dancer, nor was she a painter or a musician or proficient in any
of the other arts that have made so many Balinese famous. She was
not even beautiful; in fact, most people considered her to be
frighteningly ugly.

Traditional depictions of her portray a woman with long,
matted hair, a shapeless body and large, sagging breasts. What
made her unusual was that in Bali, where maternal and child
mortality rates were -- and still are -- extraordinarily high,
she defied death, disease and the dark magic that preys upon the
vulnerable an astonishing 18 times, bearing strong and healthy
children. And so she got her name: men, the title of a commoner
mother; and brayut, to cling like a monkey, like her children
clung to her.

Although she was not a privileged aristocrat or a fabled
beauty, during the days of her fame -- which spanned centuries --
Men Brayut was revered like a goddess. She was seen as an
incarnation of Durga, the patroness of death and the gateway to
life, whose portals she passed repeatedly in childbirth.

Long lines of worshipers visited the many shrines built to
honor her, bringing offerings and begging for her favor. Noted
statues of her, such as the one that still remains at the 11th
century Goa Gadjah temple near Ubud, would draw childless couples
from all over Bali seeking to be blessed with some of her
fertility. As a symbol of potency, prosperity, life and love, she
was respected like few other Balinese women were.

So why, then, did Men Brayut have to die? And who was her
killer?

Beginning in the late 1960s, Bali came under the rule of a
regime devoted to, above all else, development. In this new
ideological climate, women like Men Brayut began to be seen as
indicators of Bali's backwardness, their lives viewed as dirty
and disorderly.

And Men Brayut, in particular, challenged efforts to bring
Bali into the modern era. Where the state stressed self-
discipline in the name of national order and stability, Men
Brayut symbolized desire. She was, in fact, nothing like the
image of modern motherhood presented by government programs like
Family Welfare Guidance or Dharma Wanita (the Association of
Wives of Civil Servants).

She did not bring her babies to the local clinic to be weighed
and immunized. She did not fill them with vitamins and canned
milk guaranteed to increase their Intelligent Quotient, Emotional
Quotient and future earning potential.

She did not clothe them in the expensive plastic diapers
which, the television ads promise, give your baby a better
night's sleep and a more productive experience at playgroup. She
most likely fed them bits of rice with her unwashed fingers and
let them run naked around the yard.

Indeed, looking at Men Brayut, it seems like she did not have
much time to pay attention even to herself. She certainly did not
resemble the modern Indonesian career woman stereotyped in the
television soap operas, who spends her mornings at the air
conditioned office and her afternoons at the beauty salon, her
children shuttled from school to computer class to tennis lessons
by an army of servants.

Men Brayut's stringy tresses were never creambathed into
glossy perfection and her brown skin was never coated with
lotions that promised to smooth and whiten. And despite all her
powers, Men Brayut's daily life was likely one of struggle.
Working from morning until night without the aid of maids or
machines, Men Brayut represented Bali's primitive past, which was
to be replaced by a new era of progress.

But perhaps even more importantly, Men Brayut subverted state
policy by failing to conform to one of Indonesia's most important
development initiatives: population control. In traditional Bali,
children were a family's wealth, its insurance for the future and
a source of labor to help with everyday work.

But in the 1970s, with funding from international aid
organizations and under pressure from state policy, Bali became
the most successful province in the nation at lowering birth
rates. "Family planning motivators" flooded the island, knocking
on doors to encourage people to use birth control.

Maps were posted in village meeting halls indicating the
"contraceptive acceptor status" of the local inhabitants and
couples with more than two children were targeted for
"education". Men Brayut's overwhelming fertility was declared by
state planners to be no longer a blessing but a curse, a primary
cause of poverty, disease and underdevelopment.

And it was not only the bureaucrats and image advertisers from
Jakarta who sought to banish Men Brayut, but many Balinese as
well.

Hindu intellectuals who were seeking to modernize religious
theology and practice considered devotion to her to smack of
superstition, hampering Hindu efforts to fit in with the official
state creed of monotheism and challenging attempts to standardize
and rationalize religious belief and behavior.

And the promoters of Bali's charms, who were riding a cresting
wave of mass tourism and luxury hotel construction, did not care
much for Men Brayut either. She was nothing like the slim young
girls, dressed in colorful sarongs with flowers woven into their
smooth, dark hair, who graced postcards and tourist paintings and
served welcoming drinks to the foreign guests.

The "traditions" they were seeking to promote in the name of
"cultural tourism" were not the daily battles and triumphs of
women like Men Brayut, but the delicate moves of courtly dancers,
the aesthetic expressions of artists and the colorful pageantry
of communal ritual.

Men Brayut, in short, was neither "modern" enough nor
"traditional" enough in the eyes of the powers that sought to
shape Bali. And so she was declared dangerous. All over the
island, statues of her were torn down, her shrines demolished and
replaced with state-sponsored carvings of her successor: a slim,
stone woman dressed in a neat sarong and kebaya, surrounded by
her husband and two children, with a message painted underneath:
"follow family planning -- two children are enough."

But although Men Brayut was declared dead and forgotten, in
Bali, where reincarnation is an everyday event, some of her power
still remains. In cases where modern medicine fails or where
desire overcomes devotion to ideologies of order, control,
cleanliness and cultural conservatism, people continue to seek
her blessing.

In spots where her shrines used to stand, the morning sun
shines on ground littered with flower petals and burned sticks of
incense, traces of her continuing presence in the lives of
Balinese. Men Brayut was a victim, but she is also a survivor.