By Mel M. Beluan
BS Biology, 93-31826
Once upon a time, around the time when the Nokia 5210 was a status symbol, I lived in a fabled sanctuary called the Narra Residence Hall. It’s called “Narra” for short and is probably the most underrated of UP Diliman’s iconic institutions.
Mention Narra and an alumnus is likely to recall a kind of sub-subculture that can’t be missed. For a start, where else in Metro Manila could a UP student find a dormitory that charged a monthly rent of only P175 in 1994? Narra nurtured in me a wide perspective and turned me into a full-fledged Narrehan. In the process, I realized that Narra was never just a decrepit men’s dorm with asbestos for a rooftop and flaking lead paint for walls.
But now that Narra is dead (it was razed by fire), I can only hum Josh Groban’s You Raise Me Up every time I see the Friendster profile of Narra. It’s time for the mandatory eulogy.
Surrounded by the more illustrious institutions of UP Diliman — such as the Sunken Garden, AS building (Palma Hall) and Vinzons Hall — Narra could never be mistaken for an institution of similar standing. The truth is, the Narrehans were institutionalized, because Narra, equipped with old hospital beds (complete with attached IV drip stands), was once an insane asylum right smack in the dead center of the campus. It’s for the Narrehans’ special arrangements of brain cells and knack for mutation from too much exposure to lead, asbestos and the dirty peanut-butter sandwiches of street vendor Mang Bogs. Well, that’s aside from the full shock of unending grades for removal. So if a Narrehan were to be implanted in Baghdad, he would survey the situation at hand and decide — yeah, it’s home. Yet, such a scenario is unfair. The Narrehan was only capable of drifting to the hum bars of counter-terror Huling El Bimbo — if he was drunk. And in a drunken stupor, he could only dream up a secret torture protocol and it was beer. More beer.
Narra did have its share of violence, though one can argue that there has been more violence in the AS Walk, the lagoon, the other dorms over unrequited love, grades and the UP system’s budget, than there had ever been at Narra. Fact: Narrehans could only do a parody by putting up a scoreboard in the lobby to tally bodies maimed and windshields smashed by rival fraternities during their childish rumbles. Surprisingly, frat men did coexist relatively peacefully as Narrehans. Therefore, the stereotype of a violent Narra Hall was just that — a stereotype. The myth stuck because Narrehans behaved in inter-dorm activities the way any all-male dormer would — with boisterous humor.
Though officially the only all-male dorm on campus, Narra was unofficially the “Gumamela Residence Hall,” the bastion of wanton gayness. It was an identity that was neither a secret nor an identity crisis. Gays called Narra home because there were no girls here to fight for men’s attention. It was time to engender the macho men with gay-ness. But a more important thing to do was for their gaydars to rescue the inner drag queens from the steely macho frame. In fact, had actor Rustom Padilla lived in Narra, it wouldn’t have been such a struggle for him to come out.
The dorm’s diversity was beyond straight and gay. Think of peace veterans, beasts, jazz artists, geniuses beyond belief, rival gods, Geminis, hackers, winged servants, toilet poets, North Korea sympathizers, closet heteros, fundamentalists, serial killers, Rosicrucians, and the deceptively normal (Lucifer himself) — all in search of truth, love and beauty.
Hence, Narra was ultimately known for the wacky sub-subculture that arose from the mishmash.
Take its basketball team and basketball hooligans. Both honed their talents and hooliganism in Narra’s Bufoe Cup, Narra’s inter-wing league named after Narra’s council chair’s moniker. This was where Narrehan players were given colorful monikers (“Nick van Horny,” “Da Tank,” “Robotech,” “Dawson’s Creek,” “Astroboy,” “The Bone Collector,” to name a few). But what set the Bufoe Cup apart from other campus leagues was the draft day, when appointed team coaches and managers got to draft marquee players to their respective teams.
Inter-dorms came. Fact: Narrehans beat hands down those dorms reinforced with varsity players. After a Narrehan’s slam-dunk, Narra’s wannabe hooligans spilled onto the court, taunting the referees and everyone else. Some nights when the team lost, the hooligans let their frustrations out by stampeding in the Sunken Garden, in the process disrupting passionate dates.
Every year, UPCAT came and some of the wackier Narrehans would set up an information booth outside where they deliberately misled those poor entrance examinees: ‘’Ride the Tritran bus to reach Math building.’’ Others heckled the nervous ones and their equally nervous parents. You can imagine, too, how those gaydars were working overtime. “Sir, your son has the makings of a goddess.” At this point, the cops would try to disperse the Narrehans.
Who can forget the Narra Open House and the bottomless SMB? When Grey’s Anatomy marathons were not the “in” thing yet, Narrehans already had the original idea in the form of the Narra Open House Film Festival, where just about everything was screened. And Parokya ni Edgar wasn’t famous yet — an open house could still afford them. These Narrehans in drag were prone to playing risqué songs on the basketball court as they did “running man” dance steps. On occasion, an Eraserhead would also drop by to check out his old room.
Funnier still, Narra annually hosted the infamous Narra Gauntlet, a forum in which student council candidates were fair game. Imagine the proceedings: the poker-faced moderator, himself mishandling the language, strictly imposing spoken English on the candidates. Every time a hapless candidate was about to answer a question, she would have to struggle with downing the shot of gin bulag offered to her as the rowdy crowd cheered her on. Now throw down the gauntlet.
Then the candidates were asked not just to dance but also to pole-dance. Just as the pretty Muslim candidate and Gabriela stalwart from the party STANDUP was about to wrap up her position speech on some issue, she was suddenly asked, of all things, what her favorite, um, er, sexual position was. She floored everyone by answering, ‘’Of course, STANDUP.’’
Narra’s nearness to that beacon of student activism and seat of the student council called Vinzons Hall exposed it not just to lead and asbestos but also to the issues 24/7. It twisted the idea of a political discourse and made it its own.
Which brings us to KAD-Youth. It stands for Kapatiran ng mga Anak ni Diego-Youth. The acronym, a giveaway, jars. But the redundant combo of kapatiran, anak and youth is tacky. KAD-Youth was founded on a lark by Narrehans — not exactly to spoof or spite GAB-youth or Gabriela-youth. There was a theory: KAD-Youth supposedly was a way of getting the attention of the Gabriela-youth stalwart. Fan club? Stalkers? Anything. KAD-Youth would simply be the wrong way to impress a woman. It’s debatable.
Barely veiled as a political movement, it survived the scrutiny to become a true cog of student rallies. Leading the ra-ra, Narrehans would get hoarse from shouting their many risqué battle cries. Eventually, KAD-Youth’s supremo, whose moniker was “Jim Carrey,” went on to become the student council’s vice chair.
If there is something missing here, it is this: Somehow, we tend to forget that for all the high jinks that the Narrehans purveyed, they still had the time to be true gentlemen (and gays) and to serenade with all sincerity the people in other dormitories all year round.
Does the Narrehan tradition live on in former residents? We never asked to have Narra destroyed. We just asked to have the asbestos replaced as it can cause cancer. It’s probably because of the free cancer that the dorm fee stayed low at P175 all these years.
Goodbye , Narra (1952-2007). Ang sarap mo, ser!
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