Stuff of legend

JULY 17-23 marked the National Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation Week, apexing on the 149^th birthdate of Apolinario Mabini, whose braintrusting of the Philippine Revolution earned him the title Sublime Paralytic.

The week was observed with the usual paeans to the contributions of persons with disabilities to society, and celebrated with myriad activities highlighting PWDs being just-like-you-and me.    

If there is one PWD that is truly even way above you-and-me, here he is in this updated piece I wrote in December 2010.    

NO URBAN legend – somnolent Sto. Tomas is far too rustic to ever come anywhere near the fringes of cityhood – but rural lore is the town’s campanologist… okay, the ringer of the church bells for over 50 years.

So what’s so extraordinary about him? It just so happened that he – Miguel Guevarra Lingat – has been blind as a bat since birth.

“Ige” – as those close to him, our family included, is never batty though. No matter the daily rigors of climbing the steep, narrow, winding and enclosed staircase to the church belfry to ring the bells.

For as long as I can remember, there has never been a campanero  in our parish church other than Ige. And no other than him too who can really make the bells distinctly sound the message intended, be it celebratory or funereal.

If fading memory still serves right, there is the palagad – slow one-two-one two cadence of the big bell to call the faithful to early morning Mass – which turns to siyam – nine continuous dongs from the big bell signaling the start of the Mass, and the dupikal  -- continuous turning of the small bell at the end of the Mass. It is the dupikal too that accompanies baptisms.

In those days of my youth in Sto. Tomas, we knew from the punebre  -- the slow tolling of the bells to announce death in the parish – the gender of the deceased: the big bell for a man, the small one for a woman.

Never been married, Ige made bell ringing his lifelong vocation. Even on Good Fridays when the church bells fall silent, Ige does his chore of calling the parishioners to join the night’s procession with the matraca – a clapper of wood and metal.

For his services to the church, Ige has received special citation and blessing from Archbishop Paciano Aniceto himself, and public recognition from the local government unit.

At last Saturday’s Most Outstanding Kapampangan Awards rites, it was the turn of the province to honor Ige with a special award of recognition. Instead of making a speech, Ige played the harmonica as his way of expressing his acceptance of the award. That geysered in me more memories of Ige from the childhood onto young adulthood I spent in Sto. Tomas.

From the third week of October, leading to All Saints’ Day, groups go from house to house at night singing the gosu  -- the life of a saint, usually Sta. Lucia – and ending with a prayer for the poor souls in Purgatory. It is some sort of Halloween trick-or-treating mixed with caroling.

Ige made himself a permanent solo fixture of the gosu with his harmonica, playing simply the melody.

Not so extraordinary feat there, you may say, what with the likes of Jose Feliciano with his guitar, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles with their pianos lording the global music scene in their times.

So how about this yet another facet to Ige’s multi-tasked life? That of being Barrio Poblacion’s one-man aguador?

Before the waterworks system finally came to Poblacion less than ten years ago, households drew their potable water supply from those Magsaysay pumps, which later morphed to artesian wells.

With the tambayuk  -- a bamboo slat over his shoulder, from where hung two tukung – oil tin cans filled with water he himself pumped out of the wells, Ige made his way house after house filling the tapayan with the day’s supply of water.

So how did he know the way to each house, I once asked him.

“Bibilangan ku ing takbang ku. Pakirandaman ke ing pali ning aldo keng lupa ku ampon deng misasabing tau. (I count my steps. I feel the warmth of the sun on my face (whichever side is heated). And I listen to the sounds of conversations).” Indeed, he could distinguish people by their voices.

Some years back, he was passing by our house when upon hearing me talking to my mother he blurted: “Cesar, ati ka pala. Komusta na ka? (You’re home. How are you?).” 

Extraordinary too is Ige being once known in town as the “Incredible Digester.”

That title he got from his unbelievable capacity to gorge on a variety of food in one seating which earned him too some money from the side bets: clean-up he wins, left-over he loses.

In one “contest,” he finished one large bilao of bibingki (rice cake) downed with three “family size” Sprite. In another, it was three small bilaos  of pancit guisado (noodles) and a dozen pandesito, again with his favorite drink, Sprite, by the liters. Then there were too 20 pieces of balut at one time and eight large watermelons at another. Never did Ige lose in any of them.      

Sightless, it was awesome for Ige to have served for long as the ears and mouthpiece of the local folk when it came to the latest events in the community, tsismis not included. He put to flesh the umalohokan (town crier) of yore.

Ige got his information from the corner sari-sari stores – the socialization sites of rustic Sto. Tomas – as well as from the households he serviced with his water deliveries.

Pre-Pentium times, the fastest way to circulate any information around Barangay Poblacion at the time was to have it overheard by Ige. Especially if it came in the tone of a conspiratorial whisper.

For national news, Ige relied on the transistor radio tied to his waist. His favorite programs were Lundagin Mo Baby of Johnny de Leon, Ito ang Inyong Tiya Dely of Dely Magpayo and Kahapon Lamang of Eddie Ilarde.

Ige got the greatest joy of his life when one time he heard Ilarde mentioned  his name and read a story about him published in a national newspaper through the then Department of Public Information. Ilarde ended his spiel with a dedication to Ige of Freddie Aguilar’s Bulag, Pipi at Bingi:

“... Madilim ang 'yong paligid, hating-gabing walang hanggan 
Anyo at kulay ng mundo sa 'yo'y pinagkaitan 
H'wag mabahala, kaibigan, isinilang ka mang ganyan 
Isang bulag sa kamunduhan, ligtas ka sa kasalanan…” 
Blind bellman. Blind musician. Blind water carrier. Blind town reporter? And magnificent eater, on the side. Miguel Guevarra Lingat is the star of folklore, the stuff of legends.