Coming Home

I came home last week to attend an international conference at the Ateneo de Manila University. I also went home to see my sister who has Down’s syndrome as well as to visit my partner in Cebu. Coming home always brings mixed feelings. I usually sleep or read during the flight from Kuala Lumpur, but when our plane entered our territory and was beginning to descend, I looked outside the window and saw Laguna Bay. There were less wooden fences now that used to hem in the fish in the lake and the water looked cleaner. But as I looked closer, I saw rivers beginning to empty their dark water into the lake. Not just one river, but several rivers.

It is still difficult to get a Grab car outside Terminal 3, but at least the staff are kind and one of them had an umbrella that shielded us from the afternoon sun. The driver was a kind man who drove well, unlike the maniacs who drive (some) of our white taxis. There are more condominium buildings now, the traffic was slow but it moved, thanks to the MMDA traffic people stationed in junctions and on EDSA. Construction of MRT 3 is in full swing from Commonwealth Avenue to Fairview.

The first things I do is to eat—longganisa and the fried chicken of a famous fast food, dried fish and adobo. As Carmen Guerrero Nakpil wrote in a famous essay, “Where’s the Patis?”, you can bring a Filipino anywhere but when he is overseas, he will still look for Filipino food. I run a school in Malaysia and when I am stressed, I go to Kotaraya and eat Filipino food while talking to the other Filipinos, letting the sweet words of our native language roll out of our tongues now happy with the taste of sinigang or tortang talong.

What shocked me was the steep rise in prices. A sachet of fruit juice that used to cost P9 has shot up to P16. And what is that about the prices of gas and diesel? If I were still in Manila, I could no longer afford to take out the car and pay the driver, plus the heart-stopping prices of gas. I went to do my grocery and my P5,000 only yielded four plastic bags of goodies. Last year, I used to bring home at least six (or more) plastic bags of goodies with the same amount.

I live in a three-story townhouse with five rooms, and we let one of the rooms to a boarder who has been with us for years. She (a transgender) takes care of the house, mostly. This was the house where my parents lived, and I also came home because it was my father’s birthday last June 4. I felt the house convulse with joy the moment I opened the steel gate and entered. I turned on the lights, rested for a while, and then cleaned my room. The next day, I watered the plants—the roses that my mother planted many years ago, now shriveled from the heat. But one day, I know that these flowers will bloom again, in all their red and radiant glory. So much like our poor but beautiful country.

Professor Danton Remoto taught for 30 years at Ateneo de Manila University and published 15 books. He can be reached at danton.lodestar@gmail.com