pawukon calendar

 

 

Write about one of your possessions 

I look up at the familiar object on the wall above my desk. It has hung there for over ten years now, but it still intrigues me when I look at it. I always think of the first day I caught sight of it in the shop of the mysterious Mr Sudirman in Senggigi.

I had been looking for something distinctive to take home as a reminder of my time on Lombok – a very memorable time alone on this perfect tropical island: deep palm fringed beaches of white sand, with huge ocean waves skimmed by feather light one-man fishing boats. On my last day there I walked into the town and saw the shop in a side street I hadn't noticed before. An old fashioned shop front was filled with the usual sort of tourist trophies but I thought I would try it anyway. I walked through the door with its tinkling bell. Mr Sudirman looked up from the counter and gave a half smile and a nod of greeting. There seemed to be nothing authentic, nothing original. I could feel the shopkeeper's eyes on me as I poked around. As I got nearer to the counter I looked up at him. He was giving me a quizzical look – half smile, half something that seemed to agree with my assessment of the cheap factory-made items, and then I thought he nodded. He stood and beckoned me to follow: we walked over to a darker part of the shop towards the rear. There was a huge old mahogany vitrine. And there amongst a much more interesting collection of artefacts he pointed to the object I have on the wall above me today.

It is a pawukon calendar. It is a rectangular piece of wood about 45cm high by 10cm wide by 2.5cm deep, made of a dark hardwood that feels fairly light for its size. The front is intricately carved.

At the top is a creature in bas relief with arms stretched wide and legs akimbo, so as to form an X. The head is round with big ears and a frowning mouth and sad eyes. The figure could be a lion or it could be a man – it's hard to be sure. At the bottom is a decorative flourish or swag of stylised vegetation. But most of the front is divided into a series of incised squares, 210 in all, arranged in thirty rows of seven. Many of these are inscribed with symbols: a + sign, an x, a single oblique line to left \ or right /, a half moon, a dot. Some of the squares have their corners rounded to make them into circles.

These are the days of the year in the pawukon calendar. Here at the equator there are no seasons to speak of: the sun is roughly overhead every day and rain is evenly spread. Out on the rice paddies they follow an unceasing cycle of planting and harvesting and the time it traditionally took was 210 days. So the symbols represent the auspicious days for carrying out all the activities of the rice farming process: after 210 days the 'rice year' starts again. The seven day week is represented by each row, and each week of the year has its own name. At the top of the calendar is a small wooden projection through which a string is passed. A loop is knotted above with two hand carved beads, which allows the calendar to be hung on the wall of the village house. The string hangs down and holds a pointer, which can be stuck into holes at the side of each row to indicate the current week. At the end of the string is a beautifully carved brown bird, made of bone like the pointer.

The pawukon calendar is much more complicated than just the seven day cycle of the Gregorian weeks. There are ten day cycles, nine day cycles and eight, six, five, four, three, two and one day cycles. It is the interactions – the interference patterns – of these different cycles that tells the village the auspicious days to deal with their crops – to weed, to flood the paddies, to plant, to harvest, to winnow, to store. And the special days when the gods and the ancestors must be honoured. Some of this Mr Sudirman explained to me, some I found out later. Although Lombok is now largely Muslim, the village traditions date back to when Indonesia was Hindu, and perhaps even to cultures before that.

I have tried many times to understand the patterns of the marking in the day squares of my calendar. Do the crosses correspond to the five-day or six-day cycle? Are the dots every three days, or alternately three and five days? But no, they're not – I haven't been able to decipher it. It's good to think that the symbols were understood implicitly by the village this object came from, as generation after generation passed on the knowledge perhaps over thousands of years. This itself will be a descendant of many similar calendars that have governed the life of their village before wearing out and being replaced.

I suppose it will sit on the wall above my desk, the man-lion frowning down at me, urging me to get on with my writing, until I pass it on to another generation. Modern agricultural techniques have meanwhile moved on in Indonesia. Now they can achieve three crops a year and my calendar is redundant. The meaning of the symbols will be lost to the next generation: but it remains a reminder of the cycles of time, of growth, of life, and of the continuity of a culture stretching back through countless generations.

I gave Mr Sudirman the price he asked for. He seemed surprised – I suppose most tourists feel compelled to haggle, but the price seemed fair. He seemed to understand that I really appreciated this and would care for it. He raised a finger as if to say: wait there. He scurried into a back room and returned to present me with a bonus: a small carved statue of a grinning man with a long nose and blank eyes, fingers knotted together and with an elaborate headdress and big dangly earrings. It was made from the hollow bone of a water buffalo. We were all three grinning now: a fair trade had been made.