In Reply to: hmmm...... posted by CBB on Tuesday, 25. April 2006 at 21:39 Bali Time:
They have been married for several years, have bought a house a little inland from the top end of Seminyak and have a son who is 6 in September.
Dayu is Brahmana caste. She is an ordinary girl, but there are many well educated people on her mother's side of the family and one of her first cousins is a very influential professional man indeed. Naturally, she takes her religious duties very seriously.
Ron had no particular religious beliefs. They married in a very large and elaborate Hindu ceremony, but if Ron became Hindu then it would merely be for convenience and I'm sure the whole family would know that. For the two years or so they were courting, neither Dayu nor any of her family met any members of Ron's family, except possibly his brother. I have no idea what Ron told them about himself or his family. They met me and my second wife [not Ron's mother-----we're divorced] either at the wedding or a few days before.
Ron used to go to Bali quite frequently before the wedding on a package deal and they would have a few days together in a hotel, quite a novelty for Dayu.
Only one generation before, it was obligatory in that family to marry within the caste. Dayu's mother, from the well off side of the family, married a rice farmer from the hilly North of Bali. It must have been quite a cultural shock for her. But apparently there was no opposition whatsoever to Ron and Dayu's courtship and marriage from the educated side of the family and they were able to talk around, with not too much effort, what we would have called in England the villagey ones.
Ron says he is still not fluent in Indonesian, but as he spends most of his time in Bali, he's not doing so bad in this respect. Their son is called Michael. I don't know why, there is no tradition of this name in my family, but it's hardly Balinese is it? Michael is growing up fluent in Balinese, Indonesian and English. And he's a whiz on the computer.
After I lost my second wife I did not feel up to going to Bali for a while. When I eventually went, Ron brought his family to see me and we met in the street in front of my hotel. Dayu rushed up to me and gave me a big hug. The hotel front staff and the shopkeepers across the street all thought I'd got myself a young girlfriend!
I wonder if some of the apparent breaches with tradition have anything to do with the possibly more modern attitude of some of Dayu's family. Not trying to cause an argument, just wondering why.