Bade

The Balinese · Gianyar and around, Bali

A bade is the tower a body is carried to the cremation ground on. It is built in a few weeks out of bamboo, timber, cloth and paper; it is lifted onto the shoulders of dozens of people; it is carried down the road, turned about at every crossroads so the spirit cannot find its way home, and burned with what it carries. Three things make it worth building here. It is the only building in the collection made in order to be destroyed. It has no foundation at all — what holds it up is a bamboo lattice on a crowd’s shoulders, so its one structural requirement is balance over them. And its plan comes from a headcount: how many people can get underneath it at once. The sun in this model is computed for Gianyar, 8.54° S and 115.33° E.

The most important thing about a real bade is not here. A bade is an object decorated to the limit: a boma head, wings, nagas, prada cloth, gold paper, small mirrors, and a container in the form of a bull or another creature according to caste and family — and it is all of that which makes one recognisable. What is built here is only its structure: the carrying lattice, the body, the narrowing stack of tiers, cloth, an umbrella. The reason is the one the other packs give about ornament, and here it weighs very heavily. Beyond it: the tiers here are narrowing boxes where real ones have curved edges and a far more elaborate stack; the relation between height and the number of bearers is the author’s; and not one figure here comes from a measurement, and none ever will in the usual way — the only bade a surveyor could measure is one that has not been used yet.