A feast of memories
I was delighted to receive, recently, advance copies of two new books soon to be launched by the University of the Philippines Press — UP Diliman: Home and Campus, edited by Narita M. Gonzalez and Gerardo T. Los Baños, and Sundays in Manila by Robert H. Boyer. That all these people are known to me is a pleasant bonus — Narita is the widow of our fellow provinciano and mentor NVM Gonzalez, and Beng’s teacher; Gerry was my student and now my colleague; and Bob Boyer taught with our department and has since been a great friend — but the books themselves are the prize.
Narita’s book (I call it Narita’s, although Gerry ably co-edited it, because the memories are mostly hers and her generation’s) is a compilation of reminiscences and reflections about life in what’s often been called the “Republic of Diliman,” a nearly self-contained “communiversity” as Narita and her fellow pioneers call it. The term “pioneer” itself holds a special meaning in the context of Diliman, that wooded, grassy stretch of land on the fringe of the postwar country’s brand-new capital, still occupied in 1948 by the US Army’s General Records Department, with their Quonset huts and barracks that would become UP’s trademark over the next half-century. The pioneers were the first families to move into the new campus — often into a sawali cottage before graduating to a “permanent house.”
The great academic families of UP roll off the tongue in this fond memoir — not just the Gonzalezes, but the Arcellanas, the Lagmays, the Corpuzes, the Bonifacios, the Lesacas, the Monsods, the Nemenzos, the Macedas, the Mirandas, the Hidalgos, the Encarnacions, and the Abuevas, among many others. If, as they say, it takes a village to raise a child, it soon dawns on the reader that it takes a community like Diliman — as it was in the ’50s and ’60s, with family and school practically indistinguishable from one another — to raise a scholar. In Narita’s book — which also features the recollections of dozens of other contributors — the babies who are born and the children who break their bones climbing mango trees soon become professors themselves, after a rebellious diversion or two, and take over their parents’ houses in the closest thing the staunchly democratic UP has to a dynastic tradition.
I was never a member of the UP Student Catholic Action nor a fan of the fabled Fr. John Delaney — by the time I came to Diliman, the winds had turned firmly leftward — but it’s hard not to share the wonderment of the characters in this memory of Narita’s, about the genesis of a landmark:
“One evening, during one of those scheduled meals in Area 17, in the home of the Abueva brothers — Billy, Teddy, and Pepe — Father Delaney met an architect. It was quite a fortuitous event. The architect was Leandro Locsin, who was only 26 at that time.
“Thirty years later, Pepe Abueva would be UP president and Billy a National Artist, an honor Leandro Locsin would also win for himself. ‘I was the architect Father Delaney was looking for,’ Locsin would recall from that evening. The concept of a church-in-the-round was exactly what Father Delaney wanted.
“Locsin presented a model of this church to Father Delaney. One afternoon, after cleaning up the old chapel, counting host for the next Mass and like chores, Father Delaney called in some ‘sacristines’ and his two favorite grade school volunteers, Evelyn Lesaca and Selma Gonzalez. Not too long ago he’d given the two girls paper dolls, lifted them off the ground in his arms when they were light. Little did he know that they might have something to say about the model of the church-in-the-round. Like the sacristines, the two girls thought the church-in-the-round was a far-fetched dream. ‘A flying saucer of a church’ was the way the girls described it, to tease Father Delaney. They had been so used to the sawali chapel and had been comfortable with it, but now here was this dome model, suggesting a church that not only would look big, solid, and permanent but would also cost a great deal of money.”
Bob Boyer’s book is another kind of treat altogether, although much of it also takes place in the groves of Diliman. Dr. Boyer was seven when the War broke out — “playing war games with my older brothers, reenacting the landings at Leyte Gulf and Lingayen Gulf.” Thus began a lifelong interest in the Philippines, now culminating with Sundays in Manila.
I must confess, with some shame, that I and my wife Beng appear with inordinate frequency in Bob’s book; I suppose you could say that we, among many others, hosted Bob during his many visits to the Philippines, a favor he returned when I went to his college in Wisconsin a few years ago as an exchange professor. When Bob asked me to write the blurb for his book, I was only too happy to contribute these words:
“Bob Boyer offers affectionate — often intimate — portraits of Filipino life and culture, formed over many visits to a country that many if not most Americans know only in the broadest terms: as a staunch ally in the Pacific and its other wars, as the rack of Imelda’s shoes, and as the home of Manny Pacquiao. Bob sharpens that picture with factual detail, but also softens the resulting image of the Filipino with his sympathy and understanding. Whether he’s riding a jeepney, sipping iced tea at the Chocolate Kiss, exploring the mysteries of Quiapo and Mt. Banahaw, or marching up Bataan and Corregidor, Dr. Boyer invariably delights and inevitably instructs; sometimes — like all good teachers do, but ever so gently — Bob disturbs and critiques us with his observations. It’s hard to imagine how a visitor from the snowbound American Midwest could connect so well with sun-baked Pinoys, but Bob Boyer did — and does again, through this eminently enjoyable book.”
Here’s Bob musing on that phenomenon we Pinoys all know about, “Filipino time”: “Unaccountably, between 1:05 p.m. and 1:12 p.m., more than 50 people had materialized — late and together. I was baffled by this synchronized tardiness, except for Tita. Why was Tita not in tune with the others? Perhaps even Filipinos, in certain circumstances, such as a sabbatical leave, misjudge ‘Filipino Time.’ I was still further surprised later that afternoon to discover that what I had thought was the entire photo session was only the beginning. I went to lunch after the session in the reading room, unaware that there were two more sets of pictures taken, one in front of the Faculty Center and one across the road from it, with tropical shrubbery as backdrop. Cora had sent a graduate student to look for me when they noticed my absence, but I had apparently already left. When I later asked a colleague how he knew about the other sites, he said, ‘I followed the photographer.’
“So not only were my colleagues synchronized in their (late) time of arrival. All fifty-some, including Tita this time, were inexplicably in communication about the unannounced multiple sites. They clearly wanted to include me, but somehow, despite their attempts and my watchfulness, I missed the less overt cues of ‘Filipino Time,’ the ones that are so natural to Filipinos that they do not think to mention them.
“Speaking of mending one’s ways, I had to change some of my own behavior because of student politeness. I have the habit, after class has ended and I have gathered up my notes, of chatting with one or more of the students still lingering in the front rows. This is a way of getting better acquainted with students, but I had to eliminate such after-class chats at UP. As soon as the other students heard my voice, they all, including a few on their way out the door, promptly returned to their places to pay attention.”
It’s always interesting to see how others see us, because it gives us another way of seeing others — and, of course, ourselves.
UP Diliman: Home and Campus will be launched June 25, 3 p.m., at the UP Executive House, while Sundays in Manila will be launched July 2, 3 p.m., at the Sulod Tagibanwa on the fourth floor of the UP Faculty Center. See you there!
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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.
