HHV: Mikey and her sister, Dadong and her daughter

One of my favorite columnists, whose prose is normally elegant and correct, recently made a slip and came up with these sentences:

"Presidential daughter Evangeline 'Luli' Arroyo said the younger De Venecia’s drug use might have affected his thinking. / Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel 'Mikey' Arroyo, the President’s son, admitted harboring ill feelings toward De Venecia III. HE agreed with HER sister that drugs might have caused hallucinations."

If it's any consolation to one of my favorite columnists, hindi siya nag-iisa. As the Roman poet Horace once said, "Even Homer nods"--and he wasn't talking of Homer Simpson. Below are three columns I wrote long, long ago on the subject of HHV, a.k.a. His-Husband Virus, along with HHV samples I have been collecting over the years.


Dadong and her daughter, Flor and his husband

"Carabeef Lengua"
Jose F. Lacaba
Sunday Times Magazine, 1995 June 7

RUMORS and police states sometimes have a way of prematurely killing off people, but the Philippine media have a special way of murdering the Queen's English.

Just this week, former President Diosdado Macapagal was rumored to have suffered a massive heart attack. “But,” one broadsheet reported in literally bold letters immediately below the fold, “when her daughter Gloria showed up at the Philippine International Convention Center for the proclamation [of senators], the rumors died down.”

Sometime after Singapore hanged Flor Contemplacion for allegedly strangling Delia Maga, another broadsheet garroted grammar with equal dispatch. Citing the testimony of Herminia M. Manzanilla, a domestic helper who worked in the same apartment building as Contemplacion, the daily noted that “Flor had mentioned how cheaply she had bought some watches for his husband Efren.”

The italics reveal a feature of Filipino English that I wrote about only last December in another publication, but which I am constrained to write about again because I have compiled a new list of citations.

In standard English, which is to say, the English used in the greater part of the globe, the pronoun takes the gender of its antecedent. Thus, in the sentence “The mother loves her son,” her is feminine because the mother is female.

But for some strange reason, a recent trend in Filipino English is for the singular pronoun to acquire the gender, not of its antecedent, but of the noun it modifies.

My previous piece on the subject was entitled “He Raped Her Own Daughter,” and it trotted out the following citation from a now-defunct broadsheet as the quintessential example of this curious trend: “Investigation showed that [Mario] Vallejo had been raping her daughter since she was 10.”

The quintessential example found a villainous twin in the April 6, 1995, issue of a still extant broadsheet. Its Metro section reported that one Roberto Abanador “started raping her younger daughter one night in 1992.”

1992 was also the year I started gathering samples of this distinctly Pinoy way with English pronouns. That was the year a magazine I was then editing came up with this lulu, which I caught only after the fact: “Aside from his duties as vice-mayor of Parañaque, Joey is preparing to direct and star in a new sex-comedy, with her wife of course.”

Now that Joey Marquez is mayor, he should be giving his wife a more politically-and pronominally-correct role.

Parenthetically, snooty sectors used to make fun of the Erap English that Marquez's wife Almo Moreno allegedly perpetrated, but it wasn't Alma who was responsible for this front-page news item in 1993: “Child actor Vandolph, visibly scared, showed up at the Bureau of Immigration yesterday accompanied by her mother, actress Alma Moreno.”

With 1995 only half-way through, I have already come up with the following additional citations, all culled from respectable, fairly well-edited broadsheets, not from your run-of-the-mill tabloids and fanzines that play fast and loose with language as much as with facts:

“Real-estate businessman Johnny Ramos carries her two-year-old daughter Nicole who was allegedly kidnapped by Rosita de la Cruz, Ruben Soriaga and Joel Isedera last Sunday.” (Photo caption, January 25, 1995.)

“It was during that time when he [sic; this refers to feminist Aurora Javate de Dios] met his future husband, Angelito de Dios.” (Feature, January 29, 1995.)

“A beauty queen-turned-actress was apparently punched by his father.” (Gossip column, February 23, 1995.)

“… the book The Fooling of America (The Untold Story of Carlos P. Romulo) by Pedro Andrade, dismissing the late statesman as a fraud and devoting a few pages to her widow as a mediocre writer.” (Gossip column, April 9, 1995. Incidentally, a book subtitle, when used in a prose piece, is normally preceded by a colon instead of enclosed in parentheses; but that is another story, and besides, I haven't seen this particular book.)

No linguist or grammarian, as far as I know, has yet ventured to give a plausible explanation for the plight of the English pronoun in the Philippine media. So, until Pinoy Eng 101 is offered in some university's Philippine Studies program, it remains for this language loony to make a wild guess.

My personal theory is that the language of an earlier colonizer has been playing tricks with the phonetic, semantic, lexical, grammatical, and syntactical structure of Filipino English.

Spanish gave us such filanglicized words as aggrupation, fiscalize, and oppositor. It may also have indirectly influenced the gender agreement of adjectival pronoun and modified noun in Filipino English.

In Spanish, article and adjective take the gender of the noun they modify: el niño bonito, las flores rojas, la sierra morena. It doesn't require much of an imagination to see the relationship between el marido and his husband, la esposa and her wife, la hija and her daughter.

***

Slip of the lengua

"Carabeef Lengua"
Jose F. Lacaba
Sunday Times Magazine, 1995 June 19


THE HIS-HUSBAND SYNDROME. Two Sundays ago, in a disquisition entitled “Dadong and Her Daughter, Flor and His Husband,” this column took note of the tendency in Filipino English “for the singular pronoun to acquire the gender, not of its antecedent, but of the noun it modifies.”

Back issues of newspapers sitting in one corner of my workroom yielded more examples of “this distinctly Pinoy way with English pronouns.”

(A little editing has been done on texts so that misspellings, grammatical errors, and awkward syntax will not draw attention away from the his-husband syndrome.)

From a review (April 7, 1995) of the film The Last Seduction, starring Linda Fiorentino: “Linda’s character is always reducing men to silly putty—she moves through his men’s lives like a blender with stiletto heels.”

From a profile (May 13, 1995) of Frances Jane Abao, last schoolyear’s summa cum laude from the University of the Philippines in Diliman: “‘I guess she’ll be a writer, pero mas literary,’ says the obviously proud father, speaking on behalf of her eldest daughter.”

From an article (May 14, 1995) about mothers with gay sons: “The first inkling Ms. Nory Tolentino had that his son—publicist Joselito or ‘Toots’—might be gay was during his high school years.”

From the same article: “Unlike Ms. Tolentino, Lourdes Ortiz never really had to contend with inner wranglings about the homosexuality of his son, fashion designer Randy.”

From a movie-gossip column (May 14, 1995): “Phillip Salvador is in a dilemma. He has to make a choice, and it better be good: he has to either be at Kris’s bedside when she gives birth to their love child in June, or attend her eldest daughter’s graduation from high school in New York at about the same time.”

From another movie-gossip column (May 30, 1995), which quotes new actress Giselle “G” Toengi denying any relationship with actor Eric Fructuoso: “He’s just a good friend. … I know her girlfriend.”

And here’s a late-breaker! Just when I think my column is coming in early this time around, I come upon this item in a June 20 news report on the Vizconde massacre: “He said that her daughter had written to him about a spurned suitor.”

***

HHV positive

"Carabeef Lengua"
Jose F. Lacaba
Sunday Times Magazine, 1996 April 28


TWICE in this space (Sunday Times Magazine, June 11 and 25, 1995), I frothed at the mouth over the spread of something I called the his-husband syndrome.

This I described as a “distinctly Pinoy way with English pronouns,” and I defined it as the tendency in Filipino English “for the singular pronoun to acquire the gender, not of its antecedent, but of the noun it modifies.” Among the many egregious examples of this “syndrome” that I cited was the one after which I named the phenomenon: “Flor had mentioned how cheaply she had bought some watches for his husband Efren.”

In true scientific spirit, which requires a hypothesis to be revised if it is not supported by objective conditions, I hereby admit my mistake in speaking of this phenomenon as a syndrome. The dictionary defines syndrome as “a set of signs and symptoms that together indicate the presence of a disease or abnormal condition.” By extension, the medical term has also come to mean “a combination of opinions, behavior, etc., that are characteristic of a particular condition.”

In the case of the his-husband phenomenon, my scientific investigations have led me to conclude that what we have here is not a syndrome but a virus—a virus as debilitating, as dangerous, as deadly, as destructive as the Michelangelo computer virus or the human immunodeficiency virus.

I do not claim to have discovered the virus, but I expect to get a Nobel Prize in medical research for my collection of laboratory specimens of this organism—arguably the largest such collection in these parts. In view of my groundbreaking role in this endeavor, I hereby exercise my right to give the organism a habitation and a name: the his-husband virus, HHV for short, at the moment found only in the Philippines.

HHV probably causes AARGHS, the acquired acute recrudescent grammatical headache syndrome, but further tests may be necessary to determine this.

It is with the deepest sadness that I must now report a renewed outbreak of this ebullient virus. In a single recent issue alone (April 17, 1996), my favorite paper produced five HHV-positive citations.

One citation comes from an op-ed piece on whistle-blower Gloria Garabato: “She’s more popularly called the ‘pyramid-scam witness,’ who had linked his superiors to the latest financial scandal to hit the National Police hierarchy.”

The four other citations are from a front-page story on a teenage GRO who survived the Ozone fire. Edwin Rosales, father of the survivor, is reported to have “accused owners of the Ozone disco of child exploitation for hiring her daughter despite her minor age.” (Minor age is a mild case of dislocated idiom; but the disorder is not life-threatening, and we’ll let it pass.)

In the jump-page, we are then told that Edwin Rosales’s daughter, Micaela, “kept her work a secret from his father.” The report continues: “Her daughter, he said, was able to hide her job since she reported for work only on a part-time basis.” And further: “Rosales asked the NBI to provide protection for her daughter after they received several death threats from anonymous callers.” (Note that Micaela’s gender is carried over into the pronoun of work and job, but that the gender of father and daughter takes possession of the pronoun that precedes them.)

In a more recent issue (April 24, 1996) of the nation’s biggest daily, the virus appears twice in a report on imprisoned OCW Sarah Balabagan’s troubled parents. “Karim [Balabagan] reportedly wounded her wife Abai over an argument over donated money after their first visit to the UAE last year,” goes the page-one story. The jump page maintains the gender-crossing stance: “Karim denied he hurt her wife in an earlier interview with radio station dxMY in Cotabato City.”

Parenthetically, the two overs in the first sentence is distracting: “over an argument over donated money.” As the kids say: Oh-verrr! And the awkward structuring of the second sentence makes it appear that that the wife got hurt in the course of the interview. This is a bad case of the AARGHS; but you can always expect complications to arise when you’re afflicted with HHV.

Hereunder are a number of other HHV-positive cases I have come across since my last report on the subject. It must be noted that this is a random sampling, since I can’t afford to subscribe to all the Metro Manila broadsheets.

From a front-page caption (June 24, 1995) of a photograph showing a young woman beside an open casket: “Che-Che Aragon looks on his father, NBI Director Antonio Aragon, who died yesterday of a heart attack.”

From a report (August 27, 1995) on the alleged rape of a 12-year-old girl who got pregnant: “Marlon said his teachers and friends talked behind his back. No one wanted to get near him even. The whole neighborhood treated him warily. Even her 13-year-old sister was affected.”

From a column item (September 27, 1995) on actor Mark Anthony Fernandez’s crush on co-star Ana Roces: “Wasn’t it difficult doing Matimbang Pa sa Dugo with Ana Roces as her leading lady now that he’s lovey-dovey with onother girl?” Don’t ask me about onother; that’s another story.

From the caption (October 10, 1995) of a front-page color photo: “Tony Boy Lejano wipes his face while talking to her mother, actress Pinky de Leon, at the start of the Vizconde slay trial.”

From a column item (December 4, 1995) on the decision of Mr. Cruz (no first name mentioned) to allow daughter Sunshine Cruz to star in the sex film Virgin People: “Last we heard, Mr. Cruz has finally given his blessings. What probably made him change his mind is the prospect of international exposure for her daughter.” Sunshine Cruz, incidentally, is described by the same item as a “buxomy actress.” No such word in the dictionary; Sunshine is buxom and bosomy, or as they say in kanto-boy lingo: maganda ang hinaharap.

From another item in the same column (December 13, 1995), about Ina Raymundo’s screen partner: “That was probably the case with Paolo Abrera, his leading man in that beer commercial and its sequel, and now one of his three boyfriends in Sabado Nights the Movie.”

From a news story (March 9, 1996) about an incestuous rape: “She woke up when she felt someone go on top of her and was startled to see his father wearing nothing but his underwear and trying to take her clothes of. … To prevent from arousing suspicion, his father concocted a tale which pinned her pregnancies to alleged rapists who forcibly entered their house on separate occasions.” The second sentence reveals idiomatic deficiencies: to prevent from arousing suspicion, pinned her pregnancies to; again, we shall not attempt a treatment. The headline of this piece, by the way, got the girl’s gender right: “Two babies later, daughter reveals rape by her own father.”

I began my case studies with whistle-blower Gloria Garabato, and now I end with her. This is from a front-page story (March 29, 1996) about the lie detector test that she and her former boss took. Police Superintendent Virgilio Odulio, according to the story’s background information, “was implicated by her secretary, Gloria Victoria Garabato, as the mastermind behind the multimillion-peso pyramid racket at the National Police in Camp Crame.”

Incidentally, Gloria Victoria was gloriously victorious in the polygraph test. His boss failed—I mean, her boss.

This virus is virulent. It is the fervent hope of this report that disclosure and diagnosis of the above medical cases will impel editorial-desk doctors to find a cure for the strange epidemic caused by HHV.

***


Through the years, I have put together quite a sizable collection of HHV samples. Here are samples from the 21st century (names of authors and publications have been omitted to protect the guilty, including their editors):

The second one is PLDT’s IDD (international direct dial) telephone ad. It’s the more popular one, and features the ongoing story of a mother and her presumably unico hijo in the United States. The mother, a resolutely doting one, keeps calling her son up in the United States to inquire about his welfare. He tells her that he has met a nice girl, named Gracia, who is probably a Fil-Am to go by her name. The mother worries no end about the girl being too American, but her son keeps assuring her she will meet with her approval. As the story goes, the SON eventually tells HER mother SHE is going to marry Gracia and is going back to the Philippines to introduce Gracia to her. The subplot to the story is that the boy’s best friend, who turns out to be gay and has the hots for him, is devastated by the news.
--2001 August 2

A 23-year-old MAN allegedly shoved HER 21-year-old common-law wife from their 6th floor apartment, then himself jumped to his death yesterday morning in Tondo.
--2001 September 16

[Female actress Aleck] Bovick was involved in a legal battle with HIS father, Aurelio P. Tambis, who had asked the Quezon City Regional Trial Court to put HER daughter in jail for appearing in exploitative bold movies that showed her in several stages of nudity when she was only 17. The lawsuit has been settled, according to Bovick.
--2003 April 16, 2003

During the presidency of HER niece-in-law Corazon Aquino, HE [Hermie Aquino] was appointed executive secretary…
--2003 December 3

For his part, Tarlac Rep. BENIGNO “Noynoy” Aquino III, Kris’ older brother, told the same newscast that he respected HER sister’s feelings. The congressman, however, advised her not to give their 70-year-old mother, former President Corazon Aquino, “too much stress.”
--2003 December 16

Vina Morales, a guest at Eula’s wedding, came to Boracay with a guest of her own—a Malaysian GUY known only by HER first name, Sulayman. The guys is rumoured to be her current boyfriend.
--Unedited copy

An employee of Starbucks Coffee Shop and his girlfriend were abducted by two unidentified armed men shortly after they went out of the establishment Tuesday night in Muntinlupa City. / Sr. Supt. Roberto Rongavilla, Muntinlupa police officer-in-charge, identified the victims as Jeffrey Cruz, 26, a resident of Pilar Village, Las Piñas City, and KATRINA SCHOOS, 20, of Ayala-Alabang Village, Muntinlupa City…. / Schoos reportedly fetched HIS boyfriend at the said coffee shop….
--2005 January 13

HER dream is to complete HIS Dentistry course at the University of the East next April, pass the Board exams and practice her profession to help support her family and uplift it from want. / Now in her fifth and last year in Dentistry, Huwaran Luntian Galora, 23, had her dreamed [sic] almost sidetracked….
--2005 January 13

Police said the shooting incident in he house the Bagondon [sic] started when MARITES [Bagondon] confronted HIS live-in partner Oscar delos Reyes after he reportedly failed to go home last Sunday.
--2005 January 18

Now it can be told, Jenny Suico’s FATHER was just waiting for HER beloved daughter before finally signing off. Suico’s father, Aquilino de los Santos, passed away on Thursday, five days after she voluntarily left Pinoy Big Brother’s house purposely to attend to him.
--2005 September 24

Name game

This is something I wrote back in 1997, when I was doing a column called “Matter of Fact” for the Manila Times. It got published in the February 27 issue, soon after the 11th-anniversary celebration of the 1986 EDSA uprising. I reprint it here because it’s EDSA anniversary time again, and for another reason that is better explained in a postscript.


MATTER OF FACT
By Jose F. Lacaba

Manila Times
February 27, 1997


The name game


EDSA babies--children born during the four-day people-power uprising of 1986--had their 15 minutes of fame at last Tuesday's 11th-anniversary celebration of the event. Not surprisingly, a number of them bore the names of EDSA's principal players.

By one count, at least nine EDSA babies are named Corazon, after Cory Aquino. Seven carry two variations on Juan Ponce Enrile's first name--Juano and John. But Fidel V. Ramos and Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan get only one namesake each--Jopen Fidel and Honnashan.

Is that scorecard an indication of popularity levels at the time?

Surprisingly, Fidel's cousin gets a better score than Fidel. Two boys who came into the world just before Marcos hightailed it out of Malacañang will forever bear the ignominy of going by the name of Ferdinand. They must have been born to loyalist parents.

Two others are named after a noble abstraction, Liberty. And one, the star of the EDSA '96 show, who was chosen to light the freedom flame, is called Edsa Rose.

Through the centuries, historical events and cultural trends have often set new fashions in name-giving. “For many children of the '60s,” authors Nathaniel Wice and Steven Daly note in Alt.culture: An A-to-Z Guide to the '90s--Underground, Online, and Over-the-Counter (Harper Perennial, 1995), “one parental indiscretion means a lifetime laboring under a name like Dweezil, Chastity, or Justice.”

Hippie parents begat, in the words of Wice and Daly, “perfectly nice kids with weird names” like River, Winona, and Uma. (Yup, Phoenix, Ryder, and Thurman are counterculture babies.)

EDSA, though, doesn't seem to have spawned too many imaginative or hero-worshipping appellations, judging from the reported list of 23 names. Maybe the uprising happened too quickly.

There were 550 participating EDSA babies, according to one report. By what names have the remaining 527 been christened? Is anyone out there named Ninoy, Agapito Butz, Jaime Cardinal, Veritas, Radyo Bandido, or Uzi?

Maybe I just move in different circles, but it seems to me that the First Quarter Storm of 1970 and the struggle against martial law inspired a lot more names not commonly seen in baptismal registries.

I know a number of twentysomethings, both male and female, who are named Malaya, usually nicknamed Aya. Note that the FQS gave birth to Malaya but EDSA brought forth Liberty. That means two sets of street parliamentarians speaking different languages.

You can immediately tell if someone is a martial-law baby or the child of FQS activists when that someone answers to the name Makibaka, or Demo (short for Demonstrasyon or Demokrasya), or Rebo (short for Rebolusyon).

I have a goddaughter named Roja (Spanish for “red”), a godson named Fedayeen (the Palestinian word for “guerrilla”), and nieces named Miriam Mendiola, Emanwelga, and Amir (the Arabic word for “commander,” from which came the English word emir).

Tagalog names like Lualhati and Bayani, once popular in nationalist families, haven't enjoyed a revival. FQS veterans prefer coming up with new ones like Maningning, Banaue, Mithi, Hiyas, Alab, and Tagumpay.

The pantheon of leftist role models has also bequeathed names like Karl, Vladimir, Lenin, Marlenin, Mao, Chi Minh, and Norman (after Norman Bethune, a Canadian doctor apotheosized by Mao Zedong). I've even met someone actually named Karlmarxist.

More nationalistically inclined leftist types have named their children Amado Bonifacio, Crisanto (after Crisanto Evangelista, founder of the first Communist Party of the Philippines), and Lorena (after woman warrior Lorena Barros).

It isn't just babies whose names give away their parents' militant past. There are even, believe it or not, taxis named Lenin, FQS, Freedom, and Kalayaan.

Obviously, some former street marchers have gone up the social ladder. As driver-operators, they have graduated to the status of entrepreneurs and members of the national bourgeoisie.

Those taxi names, by the by, are culled from my wife's unusual collection. Her hobby of late, while riding in the front seat of our old heap, is monitoring the incredible nomenclature produced by the boom in individually owned taxicabs.

The names fall into several categories. FQS belongs to the political, but the religious, being less likely to attract the attention of government agents, seems to have more adherents, with taxis named God's Grace, God's Glory, God's Servant, God's Sheep, God's Touch, Jesus on Board Godspeed, Heart of Jesus, D'Lord's Army, Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Hope, Psalm 21, and Deuteronomy.

Among the other categories: people (Zaira & Zabrielle, Ahkong & Ahkang); places, which could be countries where owner-operators were once overseas contract workers (Bahrain, Osaka); dates, their significance known only to the owners (June One, 21st of September); family (Six Brothers, Mater et Filius); literature, sometimes in fractured forms (McBeth, Othella, Alvatross); transportation (Road 'R' Us, Wheels and Hubs); high technology (Bits & Bytes, Zybernetics); anatomy (Tumbong, Tarugo); vices (Fundador, Cuadro de Jack); and miscellaneous (Nameless, Whatever, Makuletski).

More space would be needed to give justice to this subject. My wife's personal favorites are Nik-Nik, Nicnoc, Noc-Noc, Nikmik, Buniknik, and Mik-Mik.

There's also a taxi surnamed Lacaba. It sped by so quickly that my wife missed its first name. I can assure you it doesn't belong to me.

My own favorite is Brod Pit Taxi. That's probably owned by a fratman who thinks he looks like Brad Pitt. I am instructing my siblings to stop calling me Kuya and to address me henceforth as Brod Pete.



POSTSCRIPT, February 21, 2008:

For some time after the above column came out, I was addressed by friends and officemates as Brod Pete. But then, not long after the above column came out, along came Bubble Gang comedian Isko Salvador, who also took the name Brod Pete for one of his personas, so I dropped my brodpete@hotmail.com email address and went with kapete, which in the past decade went through three email addresses—the now defunct kapete@pacific.net.ph and kapete@ispx.com.ph, and the still current kapete@zpdee.net.

Ka Pete was a jocular appellation that originally came up after I wrote a script called Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim (1984), but it didn’t really catch on among my friends until I started using it as an email address.

And now, I have been reliably informed, Isko “Brod Pete” Salvador also has another TV program where he goes by the name Ka Pete. TV has a wider reach than the print media, so is it time for me to say goodbye to my own Ka Pete handle, even if it’s already etched in the blogosphere as a result of this kapetesapatalim blog that I have just started?

Maybe it’s time for me go by the name used by my journalism students and by my current officemates, who have all knighted me and are calling me... Sir Pete.

Ekphrasis: Sampayan

Salamat sa makatang si Marne Kilates, nalaman ko na ang tawag sa tulang pumapaksa sa visual arts o artistic objects ay ekphrasis. Isang kilalang halimbawa ng ekphrasis ay ang “Ode on a Grecian Urn” ni John Keats. Hindi ko pa alam ang term ay may nagawa na pala akong ekphrasis. Noong nagsusulat pa ako ng tula sa Ingles, may mga nasulat akong tula tungkol sa painting na “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” ni Seurat at “Birth of Venus” ni Botticelli. Kailangan ko munang halukayin ang luma kong files para sa mga tulang iyan.

Kamakailan, kaugnay ng kanyang solo art exhibit ay hinilingan ako ng kaibigang Heber Bartolome, mang-aawit, songwriter, at pintor, na sumulat ng isang tula tungkol sa isa niyang painting.

Nasa itaas ang painting ni Heber. At narito ang aking ekphrasis:


SAMPAYAN
Tula para sa painting ni Heber Bartolome, “Sinampay”

Masdan itong sampayan.

Hindi hari, hindi pari,
ang nagmamay-ari
sa bahaging ito ng mundo.

Dugo, luha, pawis
ay malapot na putik
sa ibang bahagi ng mundo.

Daga, ipis, lamok, limatik:
putik! putik! putik!
sa ibang bahagi ng mundo.

Pero konting sabon, konting tubig,
init ng araw at halik ng hangin
ay papawi ng putik

kahit sa isang saglit.

At sa isang saglit na iyon,
malinis, mabango, makulay ang buhay
sa isang bahagi ng mundo,

dito, sa sampayang ito,
kahit na ang nagmamay-ari
ay hindi pari, hindi hari.


Ni Jose F. Lacaba

Tagubilin at Habilin

I'm giving blogging a try, and this is my first post.

I wrote the following poem, obviously inspired by "Desiderata" and "Sunscreen," sometime in 2002 or 2003. It was commissioned by Armida Siguion-Reyna for her album POP LOLA (Viva Records, 2003). Armida's recording of the poem, with background music by Ryan Cayabyab, got a lot of airplay on Ted Failon and Korina Sanchez's program on DZMM teleradyo last year, 2007, just before the elections. Sometimes Ted himself recited the poem. In the wake of the Jun Lozada revelations in the Senate, I have been getting text messages that the poem is again getting airplay on the Failon-Sanchez show on DZMM.

This version is slightly different from the recorded version. The main difference is that the first stanza gets repeated somewhere in the middle of the poem. I'm hoping that someday the stanza will become a sung refrain, like the "You are a child of the universe" part of "Desiderata."


TAGUBILIN AT HABILIN
(Slightly revised version)
Ni Jose F. Lacaba


Mabuhay ka, kaibigan!
Mabuhay ka!
Iyan ang una't huli kong
Tagubilin at habilin:
Mabuhay ka!

Sa edad kong ito, marami akong maibibigay na payo.
Mayaman ako sa payo.

Maghugas ka ng kamay bago kumain.
Maghugas ka ng kamay pagkatapos kumain.
Pero huwag kang maghuhugas ng kamay para lang makaiwas sa sisi.
Huwag kang maghuhugas ng kamay kung may inaapi
Na kaya mong tulungan.

Paupuin sa bus ang matatanda at ang mga may kalong na sanggol.
Magpasalamat sa nagmamagandang-loob.
Matuto sa karanasan ng matatanda
Pero huwag magpatali sa kaisipang makaluma.

Huwag piliting matulog kung ayaw kang dalawin ng antok.
Huwag pag-aksayahan ng panahon ang walang utang na loob.
Huwag makipagtalo sa bobo at baka ka mapagkamalang bobo.
Huwag bubulong-bulong sa mga panahong kailangang sumigaw.

Huwag kang manalig sa bulung-bulungan.
Huwag kang papatay-patay sa ilalim ng pabitin.
Huwag kang tutulog-tulog sa pansitan.

Umawit ka kung nag-iisa sa banyo.
Umawit ka sa piling ng barkada.
Umawit ka kung nalulungkot.
Umawit ka kung masaya.

Ingat lang.

Huwag kang aawit ng “My Way” sa videoke bar at baka ka mabaril.
Huwag kang magsindi ng sigarilyo sa gasolinahan.
Dahan-dahan sa matatarik na landas.
Dahan-dahan sa malulubak na daan.

Higit sa lahat, inuulit ko:

Mabuhay ka, kaibigan!
Mabuhay ka!
Iyan ang una't huli kong
Tagubilin at habilin:
Mabuhay ka!

Maraming bagay sa mundo na nakakadismaya.
Mabuhay ka.
Maraming problema ang mundo na wala na yatang lunas.
Mabuhay ka.

Sa hirap ng panahon, sa harap ng kabiguan,
Kung minsan ay gusto mo nang mamatay.
Gusto mong maglaslas ng pulso kung sawi sa pag-ibig.
Gusto mong uminom ng lason kung wala nang makain.
Gusto mong magbigti kung napakabigat ng mga pasanin.
Gusto mong pasabugin ang bungo mo kung maraming gumugulo sa utak.

Huwag kang patatalo. Huwag kang susuko.

Narinig mo ang sinasabi ng awitin:
“Gising at magbangon sa pagkagupiling,
Sa pagkakatulog na lubhang mahimbing.”
Gumising ka kung hinaharana ka ng pag-ibig.
Bumangon ka kung nananawagan ang kapuspalad.

Ang sabi ng iba: “Ang matapang ay walang-takot lumaban.”
Ang sabi ko naman: Ang tunay na matapang ay lumalaban
Kahit natatakot.

Lumaban ka kung inginungodngod ang nguso mo sa putik.
Bumalikwas ka kung tinatapak-tapakan ka.
Buong-tapang mong ipaglaban ang iyong mga prinsipyo
Kahit hindi ka sigurado na agad-agad kang mananalo.

Mabuhay ka, kaibigan!
Mabuhay ka!
Iyan ang una't huli kong
Tagubilin at habilin:
Mabuhay ka!