Ties that bind

I AM my brother’s keeper.
That may well define the relationship among former seminarians of the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary in the City of San Fernando, Pampanga. It is a relationship that cuts across generations of the many who were called and the few who were chosen to spend their formative years “beneath the mantle blue” of the Indu ning Mayap a Usuk : whether it was in Guagua, where the then Mater Boni Consilii Seminarium was birthed in 1950, in Apalit where it relocated, and – in 1963 – in its final and present site as the Anglicized MGCS.
Togetherness – in prayer, in study, at play, even in sleep in a common dormitory – provides the thread with which the beautiful quilt of that relationship is knitted. No matter the stiffness of competition for scholastic honors. Notwithstanding the physicality of contact sports like basketball, and in our time – thanks to Bruce Lee – the martial arts.
A fraternity – but not in the sense of the Greek-lettered kind – ours is a brotherhood that traces its lineage to one single mother: Our Lady of Good Counsel, to whom we profess a life-long devotion.
From “infancy” at MGCS – that is Infima for the first year, the brotherhood is established when a senior seminarian serves as an “angel” to the newcomer called the “soul,” the former teaching, guiding and helping the latter adjust to seminary life.
Seminarians may not remember their “souls” – one may have as many as four in his stretch of five years at the minor seminary, from his second year or Media onward to Suprema , Poetry and Rhetorics. But they most certainly will not forget their “angels.”
Rising out of this angel-soul affair is yet another familial tie-in, the Big Boy-Small Boy kinship. All seminarians senior to one are big boys; all the juniors, small boys. The latter are fated to follow the orders of the former. The pecking order of things is strictly followed even today among inter-generational groups of former seminarians, wherever they may gather.
From this bonding naturally evolved a strong support system among the “ex-sems,” most manifest in the United States where the alumni association is most vibrant.
Acquiesce consiliis meis. Follow my advice. More than a motto inscribed upon the seal of the MGCS, it is at the very core of our devotion to our Mother.
Every alumnus takes to heart the hymn of his youth, especially that part: “…in my doubt, I fly to thee for guidance/Mother, tell me what am I to do.”
In times of differences and misunderstandings, even in instances of conflict among us, it is to our Mother, the mediatrix that she is, that we appeal for resolution.
The opening strains of our seminary lullaby – the evening song before we retire to bed – Salve Regina, are enough to cool the hottest of passions, and by the time we reach the lines “Eia ergo, Advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte..” all pain is soothed, all emotions calmed, and everything is right. Indeed, “O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria.”
Our dear Mother is calling. Come home on December 29, 2007.
For us who went astray, Apu Ceto says all is forgiven. Just come home to Mother.

Murder most foul

NO, MARIANNET Amper did not commit suicide. She was murdered.
Hers were not the hands that tightened the noose around her neck. Hers was not the will that shoved her to hang herself.
For a 12-year old to even contemplate of taking her life is truly a rarity, a near impossibility. An “isolated instance” as a Malacanang factotum said.
But it happened. And it can, nay, will happen again. The elements that conspired in the murder of Mariannet free to inflict their heinous crime anew with the utmost impunity: a government that gives premium value to economic statistics as though people never mattered, a society that celebrates sosyal ostentation and numbs its senses to its social responsibility, a Church that preaches long but practices short its mission of “preferential option for the poor.”
Yes, dummy, the Church, the government and society make not just the usual suspects but the indicted murderers of Mariannet.
As Mariannet and her family scrimped to survive, where was society, especially that which tagged itself “civil” and purported to have all the answers to the nation’s ills? Where was the Church – in this bitter case of irony, the Church that consecrated herself to Mary utterly failing to care for this one “Little Child of Mary”? Ain’t that what Mariannet means, your Eminences and Excellencies?
And the government?
Ah, so busy in overachieving its targets for the nation’s prosperity. Why, the peso just surged to a seven-year high of 42.79 to the now not-so-almighty dollar. Exports grew 4.7% to $4.37B in September from a year ago, so the National Statistics Office trumpeted. Inflation? It’s been ages since we heard the word. Unemployment? Why, there’s a call center just around the corner, or a nursing home abroad.
Not even the increase in the pump price of petroleum products can outsoar the spirits of the Arroyo administration on the wings of its economic achievements.
Not even the botched national broadband network deal and the resultant bribery scandal, not even the Palace payola to Panlilio and some other politicos can mar the Arroyo administration’s feel-good-look-good image of itself.
Given then the prevailing prosperity in the land – according to the glorious gospel of GMA, that lonely death in Davao makes indeed an “isolated” case?
This administration has truly lost most miserably not only its sense of propriety but its humane sensitivity.
The death of Mariannet is a national tragedy that shows the emptiness of the peso valuation and all those economic indicators. Her holocaust in the most unholy altar of poverty is a national shame that bares the nothingness of this government’s trumpeted achievements.
Many, many more Mariannets will be thrown in as sacrifice to the great Moloch unless this government wakes up to reality, this society unclothes itself of its vanity, and this Church unfrocks itself of its hypocrisy?

Role reversal

NO, the Reverend Governor Eddie T. Panlilio did not renege on his campaign promise to open the capitol to the people, especially to those whose concerns he vowed to take with him upon assuming the governorship. “Dala ta la ding daing ding pakakalulu king Kapitolyu,” (We shall bring the lamentations of the poor to the Capitol). Still remember?
So Panlilio has not forgotten. He flung the doors of the capitol wide open: but not those of his own Office of the Governor.
Monday afternoon, the corridor leading to the sangguniang panlalawigan session hall resembled the charity ward of an already charity-run public hospital.
People – in all degrees of ailment, in all stages of want, in all ranks of destitution – patiently waited for the honorable SP members to end their closed-door executive session.
The cacophony of concerns that crisscrossed that corridor comprised more than enough substance, if not form, to make an indictment on the Panlilio (mal)administration.
A case in point: An old woman from Bundagul, Mabalacat needed P5,000 to get her daughter out of the hospital. She managed to borrow fare from a neighbor for her trip to the capitol.
At the Office of the Governor, she was told to secure 1) a certification from the barangay captain that she indeed resided in Bundagul; 2) a certification from the municipal social welfare office that she indeed was an indigent; 3) the “abstract of the illness” from the hospital. And then return.
The poor woman asked if the Office of the Governor would be so kind as to give her some cash, P200 to be exact, with which to repay the fare she borrowed.
Came the retort: “Ala keng pera keni. Munta ka king sanggunian karin la ring pera.” (We don’t have money here. Go to the sanggunian, the money’s there.)
So she was there waiting for her Board Member Cris Garbo to grant what the Office of the Governor denied her.
The story of the old woman was multiplied in the number of people in that corridor – all having undergone the same routine.
“Penabi da ke pu king opisina nang gubernador. Tiru da ke pu keni king sanggunian, uling ila kanung makabiye king pamangailangan mi.” (We were driven away from the governor’s office. They directed us to the sanggunian, telling us that it is here where we can get what we needed.) An emaciated mother toting a nutrition-challenged boy told anyone who cared to listen.
“Pipakit-pakit no pa mo retang P500,000 ibat kanu Malakanyang. Obat e na nala pemye reta kekatamung mangailangan, mikaatin la pa sanang pakinabang.” (He (Panlilio) showed off the P500,000 he alleged to have come from Malacanang. He should have just doled this out to the needy so they amounted to something good.) So observed a man from Panlilio’s own town of Minalin.
Seconded one from Macabebe: “O detang pagmayabang dang metung milyun kada aldo king quarry. Kekatamung atsu ngeni keti, e man siguru miras siyentu-kinyentus mil ing pamangailangan tamu. E la man mapitna reta andiyang aldo-aldo ating manyad masakit keti.” (How about the P1 million daily quarry income they are bragging about. The needs of all of us now here could barely amount to P150,000. Given even daily to the sick and needy, this will barely scratch the quarry fund.)
Comparisons – odious as they are – could not be helped in these desperate situations. Thus, a grizzled panhandler from San Pedro Cutud, San Fernando ruing “the good old days”: “Sabi ra mapanako la ring Lapid. Pero mas higit da no mang pekinabangan ding kalulu uling mapanyaup lang tutu kesa kening pari pa mong mesabi, sidsad neman king kalangi.” (They said the Lapids robbed us. Still, the poor benefited more from them because they really helped. So unlike this priest who is so stingy.)
At the time of the Lapids truly, the Office of the Governor served as the primary dispensary for the needy; the sanggunian no more than a bonus or a pandagdag. As it should: the funds being reposited in the executive, the laws being the province of the legislative.
In Panlilio’s term, a reversal of roles obtains. See how the governor’s twin towers of clitoral fixation make their own interpretation of the law and give the sanggunian the run-around-and-round!
Now, were the sanggunian given the quarry collections to run in return…
(Zona Libre/Punto! November 7, 2007)

A communion with the Kapampangan soul

THEIR MUSIC seared the psyche of a race long in search of its forgotten greatness: its culture maculated by the infusion of alien influences, its virtues devalued by the immoralities of flawed saviors, its very existence imperiled by nature’s rage.
That was ArtiSta.Rita, composed of home-grown talents shepherded by a Kapampangan returnee from London’s West End, when it exploded into the local scene a few years back with its maiden album. Kapampangan Ku, the title song, defined the very identity of the race and inspired a celebration of everything Kapampangan, from the cultural to the culinary, from the historical to the mythical.
It did not come as any surprise then that in this May’s elections, it was Kapampangan Ku that likewise defined the very outcome of the gubernatorial contest.
In its third outing, ArtiSta.Rita went beyond romancing the Kapampangan character: Paralaya is a communion with the Kapampangan soul. The spirituality of the race is celebrated here, even in the most mundane and ordinary of places, things and events.
Can anything be extraordinary in that ubiquitous roadside sign Abe Pakakalale? The simple caution for motorists to slow it down is lifted to the high moral plane of right over wrong in treading the very road of life – “dadalan kami king yatu,” to the ultimate destination – “parasan mi balen nang indu.”
Akasya starts with but immediately transcends imaginings of Joyce Kilmer’s famous ode to the tree, and assumes the very manifestation of the Creator Himself, cherishing and nurturing all of creation – “Lingap mu’t lugud king labuad/Sasalbag babie kang bie kanakung abe.”
The search for life’s meaning that takes one to great distances and greater longings only to find it within oneself, if only one opened his heart – so celebrated in Paulo Coelho’s novels, most notably in The Alchemist – finds a fuller, and deeper, expression in Pamanuli -- “Nung nukarin mengaparas/Ikwang mengalampas-lampas/Atiu ka pala keni king lele/Kakung matimyas.” Life’s journey ends where it starts – with the Lord.
And then, oneness with Him. Stirrings from the prophet Isaiah, resonate in Abe Mu Ku – “Abe mu ku nukarin ka man/Abe mu ku kapilan man/Ala ng muna pa/King lugud ku keka/Abe mu ku kakung kaluguran.”
Indeed, there is more to moonlight than Eros. Bulan provides an uplift to the spirit eclipsed in the darkness of despair – “Potang malungkut ka/Potang tatakut ka/Potang paintunan mu ku/Lumwal ka, talanga ka/Akit me ing bulan a masala/Karin mikit kata.”
The human spirit rises higher with man’s affirmation of God’s guiding light in Siwala – “Ing kekang s’wala diren nakung sala/Dala ne ning angin iadwang king batwin/Ing kekang s’wala diren nakung sala/King isip at pusu, kapasnawan.
Penitential lamentation, so inhered in the praxis of Kapampangan Catholicism, naturally finds expression in Aduan Ku Mu – “Aduan ku namu Keka O Ginu/Katmuan Mu la ding kakulangan ku at antabayanan king gulu/Bustan Mu sa’ng mibayu ing karokang gewa ku/Lawen Mu sa kakung lugud daraun ku O Ginu.”
Two selections that pay homage to the father and the teacher still do adhere to the album’s general theme of the soul, of man’s pining for the divine: God after all is Father and Teacher to man.
To win his future, a young man looks back at his past and sings a song of gratitude to his father in Tatang Kung Kaluguran – “Ngeni maragul na ku, ladlad ku no ring pakpak ku/Sulapo na king angin sapul sapul king lupa ku/Mangaparas man nukarin, ing lugud mu atyu pa rin/Dakal a salamat tatang, king masanting a daratng.”
Mayap a Oras gives recognition to the hardships of the talaturu in moulding the mind of the youth – “Migigising kang maranun/Obra ing isipan/Mananggang gatpanapun/Babie mu ing eganaganang/Lugud at sala/ A manibat king pusu/Kabiasnan at kebaluan/Ika ing tuturu.”
As the Kapampangan is a lover, so some love songs are a must in an album expressive of his soul.
Bayung Bengi, Bayung Sinta sings of the lovers’ anticipation of an early evening tryst, of the stars watching over a love ever renewed – “Pagtiririn tala ding batwing masala/King bulalako metung ku mu adwan/Eka sa tatabili gamat pakatalan.”
The angst, the fears, the insecurities of the torpe at seeing the object of his repressed affections are played to life in the carrier single Paralaya -- “Dakal ku buring sabian keka/E ku balu nung atuan daka...Nung balu mu mung malwat ku nang sasalikut/Ing panamdaman, pansinan mu naku man…Alub kung makiagnan king kakung palsintan.”
On the wings of song, cliched yes but that is the experience one gets with the blend of the musical accompaniment that enhanced poetry, if not the purity, of the lyrics.
Thanks to Andy Alviz and all those great artists, Paralaya set me on a personal journey to get to my Kapampangan core.
(Zona Libre/Punto! November 5, 2007)