POST SCRIPT ON GAGALANGIN (by Mario Silva)

Once in a great while, a blogger receives unexpected rewards such as this -- a letter/commentary from amazing Mario Silva sent through his daughter, kindred blogger, exskindiver Chesca.

(Read it for the historical highlights and human-interest sidelights about old Manila)

Dear Chesca:

This is an additional comment to Annamanila's blog. Very much delayed but I think she will still like to read it.

I did not know that Gagalangin is in Tondo. I learned this after going over her blog again. She wrote so many interesting things. The woman (Nena), whose story is so touching, a very admirable woman indeed. I am sure many of our dear women, wives and mothers, have gone through so much of this kind of suffering. She wrote about the native delicacies of our home land (chicharong bulaklak, balun-balunan, day-old chicks, penoy/balut, chicharong baboy, burong talangka.etc). She made me re-live again what is good and beautiful about the Philippines.

Her description of Gagalangin - I never realized how many illustrious sons and daughters Gagalangin had produced. Heroes, great men and women of our history, in our literary field, in the theater, in movies. Kaya pala Gagalangin ... it was the cradle of so many of our "talagang ginagalang" na mga mamayan. I recall mentioning long ago her blog to Ayo, and his remark was, "why did I never know about Gagalangin when I have known Manila for so long?" I think it is because during his time, Gagalangin was so out of the way for the youth like you and the rest of the children who grew up on Quezon City.

Going back to her blog again, I realize that I was mistaken. The street where I learned to drive was not Maypajo but Juan Luna Street, and the eatery that served bibingka beside the Pritil bridge was not Aling Nena, but Ferino's. Thanks to those who commented on her blog. But as you know, I must be given some leeway … it was many, many years ago … more than half a century ago. And going back again to Pritil Bridge, it reminds me of the book "Manila, My Manila" by our National Artist, the late Nick Joaquin. He said that Manila took a long time to make and that its ground used to be the sea and that surely explains the presence of so many esteros, one of them being where Pritil bridge is located. And speaking of esteros, the bridge on Escolta, near Sta. Cruz Church, along where Samanillo Building and Regina Building are located crosses an estero. And in Quiapo, there used to be a street called Estero Cegado (I wonder if that street still exists). Some historians, as I recall, also refer to the Estero de Reina Regente and Estero de Binondo.

One of her commentators also mentioned Bangkusay. Our history records a Battle of Bankusay of 1571. In the war of colonization the Spanish Forces had embarked on a search for native warriors who had resisted them. A fierce battle ensued in Bangkusay between the Spanish forces and the native Manilans. The Battle of Bankusay remains a significant event in our history.

More than 400 years later, on a night in May, 1954, another battle would occur in Bankusay. In this site, a gang war erupted between what was known as the Grease Gun Gang and another rival gang. The case (which I understand was made into a movie) resulted in prosecutions for four separate cases for murder and frustrated murder. The victims were in a calesa parked along Bangkusay street, between Kapulong and Inocencio. One of the survivors testified that he was there because his parents "needed pigs for the Gagalangin fiesta..." There were eleven originally accused, of which, one was killed before the trial, another was discharged and used as a state witness, but was killed after he testified, and nine stood trial. Three were acquitted and the rest who were sentenced to various sentences including life, appealed to the Supreme Court. The High Court in its decision modified the lower court's decision and sentenced four to the extreme penalty of death and the remaining two to life imprisonment. The Court also stated in its decision that it was error for the trial court to have acquitted the three but that as the law stands, it was powerless to effect the correction.

The reason why this is of interest to me is not only because of the element of Bangkusay and Gagalangin in the case, but also I was a young lawyer then and I was assigned by the court to defend one of the accused as "counsel de oficio." The judge who assigned me was my former professor at the Ateneo. The trial lasted several months. I recall that one of the trial dates was January 19, 1955, when your kuya Jimmy was born. I represented one of the three acquitted. My services were performed for free, gratis et amore.

Torres High School, which was discussed in her blog was named after Florentino Torres, one of the first four Filipino justices of the Supreme Court. The site of the school was originally a Constabulary barracks. As I said in my original comment to her blog, I and my brother and two sons of General Castaneda, Mariano Jr. and Juanito, walked all the way from St. Theresa's College in San Marcelino Sreet in Ermita to Juan Luna Street in Gagalangin, where the Constabulary Barracks was located. General Castaneda was the then commander of the military barracks. Our childhood escapade occurred sometime in 1937.

General Castaneda later figured in a famous incident. In 1947, he saved President Manuel A. Roxas from assassination when he kicked away a hand grenade hurled on the stage in Plaza Miranda, Quiapo, immediately after President Roxas delivered a speech. The grenade rolled over and fell outside the stage, killing an innocent onlooker and wounding others. The would-be assassin, Julio C. Guillen, was arrested, tried, and convicted. He was executed in the electric chair of the national penitentiary in Muntinlupa in 1950.

Before that, General Castaneda, as younger officer, had been assigned to Cavite, where Mommy's dad, your lolo Gregorio, was then assigned as Provincial Treasurer. Your lolo and General Castaneda knew each other well. Mommy told me that she and your Auntie Norma, had always dressed up similarly then they were children and they were often mistaken as twins. In fact, long, long after, General Castaneda happened to meet your Auntie Dollie and had asked her how the twins were.

These are some musings which have come to me since the Gagalangin blog of Annamanila. I hope you can transmit this to her. She writes very well and all her stories are so very interesting.

Daddy











Letterwriter/guest blogger Mario Silva, in his heydays, as trial lawyer in Manila
(circa 1960)

SHORT LIVED THE QUEEN: Mayday Mayhem in Gagalangin

Her first crush didn’t see the light of day.

It happened in Maytime, summer of beginnings, of awakenings, even rude ones; season of the santakrusan festival and alay bulaklak kay Birhen Maria -- (the Lady wasn’t called Mama Mary back then).

Naku, the hermana mayor wants you to be a sagala tonight -- her mom told the young girl that Mayday, as she came home from the palengke, catching her breath. Excited, she omitted to say she was to stand in for another girl, a cousin, who suddenly came down with the flu.

The 10-year-old, just then beginning to enjoy being quirky, said no, no, no. You can’t make me. I will die first.

You don’t want to be Reyna de los Flores? -- her Mom asked, unbelieving. That’s second honor to Reyna Elena, don’t you know? The girl wasn’t impressed.

She showed her a pink frock of taffeta, chockful of sequins and flowerets, borrowed from she didn’t care who. The girl didn’t give it a second look.

Then she added that Rudy, a young boy from Antipolo Street -- would escort her.

That was when the ten-year-old blinked: “Sige na nga,” she relented, but not before she played pakipot for yet another hour.

Rudy was the younger brother of her Ate Malu’s best friend, Rodora. He was mestizo-looking, tall and quiet, and had this smile best described as pamatay. Every other girl she knew had a crush on him, but quirky as she was, she herself liked to boast she didn’t give a hoot about boys.

She had her first ever hair-styling session at the neighborhood beauty parlor that afternoon. Her long straight hair was intricately rolled, patch by patch, around wire rollers then inserted into a helmet- shaped dome where her head was turbo-broiled -- sort of -- till her ears turned lechon-red. When the hair stylist was done fussing with her hair, she had a headful of coily curls or curly coils – take your pick -- loosely tied at the back. It was called tribuson, the preferred do for young hair.

She had goo applied to her face. And a black pencil drawn on soft places around her eyes. Plus the final touch – red kolorete smack on her mouth and smudged on her cheeks, blusher-like. She liked what lipstick did to her face – almost grown up, and a bit like, she decided, not child star Tessie Agana as the stylist insisted, but her favorite adult actress, Lolita Rodriguez.

That night, amidst torches ablaze, and to the beat of bugles and drums, the mestizo boy, looking dapper in embroidered barong tagalog, took his place beside her. She thought he looked worried but she continued to beam to the crowds, feeling absolutely gorgeous.

A few paces later, as the procession turned from Angat to her own Pampanga Street, he leaned to whisper in her ear as her heart skipped a beat.

(NOTE: Here's where the audience/READER participation begins. Rudy could have whispered one, ONLY ONE, of three things. Pick one, if YOU will.)

· “Anna, this is so boring. May chewing gum ka ba dyan?”

· “ Anna, ang kapal ng pulbos mo. Bawasan mo nang unti.”

· “Anna, mas bagay sa akin ang gown mo.”

As she dabbed a pink handkerchief on her face, “Dios te Salve, Maria” reverberated dolorously, like a funeral march. She felt the beginnings of a stomach ache as the procession traversed the main Juan Luna Street, and then back a seemingly endless time.

She never marched as Reyna again, not that she remembers being invited to be a sagala again.

(Two years later, Rudy became her classmate in first year high school. Neither of them behaved as though he or she remembered that disastrous May evening. They would nod shyly at each other when they met, and that was it. They didn’t even become friends. Tsk.)

Notes:

1. Santakrusan- or Santakrus de Mayo, a procession/parade reenacting and celebrating the search for the Holy Cross led by Queen Helena of Spain.
2. Sagala – the young women/girls who marched in the procession, playing the various characters in the long-ago search, wearing long, colorful gowns.
3. Hermana mayor – the host and organizer of the Santakrusan
4. Alay bulaklak - flower offering.
5. Reyna de los Flores - Queen of the Flowers.
6. Pakipot – coy, hesitant, but only pretended
   
7. Pamatay – killer, thus killer smile.
8. Ang kapal ng pulbos mo, bawasan mo nang unti – You have too much powder on, remove some of it.
9. Mas bagay sa akin ang gown mo – Your gown would look better on me.

Food Trippin' ala- Gagalangin (Tondo), circa nevermind

Bibingkahan at the Manila Hotel began by the Pritil Bridge.

In my young and maiden years in Gagalangin, I’d munch on a cob of roasted corn while reading Liwayway magazine, curled up on the sofa. If it rained, I let it. That was my idea of a perfect day.

Great food then as now came in binary pairs – dinuguan at puto, mangga’t suman, tokwa’t baboy. Mine was gatas ng kalabaw at tapang baka. You pour a cup of the rich milk over a plate of steaming, pandan-fragrant rice, add a sprinkling of rock salt, and top the caboodle with chunks of fried tapa just slightly fringed with golden fat. You close your eyes involuntarily with every spoonful -- feeling all is right with the world. Though I didn’t know the phrase then, it was to me the quintessential comfort food.

There must be farms near Gagalangin for the milk was delivered to our doorsteps still mainit-init, with the top cream two inches thick, in a coke or gin bottle, stopped by folded banana leaves twisted screwlike.

My Tio Kulas, a wealthy hatter, lived in a big house on Cavite Street three or four streets away. They did not only own the only phonograph (the only place I could play a vinyl record some relative sent me) but also the only authentic lusong that side of Gagalangin, with which they made authentic linupak every month or so.

I’d hop-skip my way over to Tio Kulas’, though it was 20 minutes away, if it was “linupak day,” for it was more eagerly anticipated than an official holiday. Authentic linupak is not mashed cassava but saging na saba pounded on lusong, with fistfuls of grated coconut and sprinklings of sugar quickly tossed in between the rising and falling of the giant wooden pestle. Since the banana is semi-ripe, the linupak is not sweet and soft but tart and springy. This delicacy is rarely commercially available in the city, then or now.

(Years ago, in a fit of craving, I tried to prepare linupak using only persistence and a kitchen almires. To say it was a disaster is an understatement.)

I have other scrumptious memories of Gagalangin.

Sunday morning would find us youngsters sitting expectantly by Aling Tisya’s food stall in the talipapa. Aling Tisya opens only on weekends and was worth waiting a whole week for. She served the best goto in the world -- the bowl big, generous and steaming, the porridge freshly cooked and not yesterday’s bahao, the tripe and bituka pieces succulent and just a bit softer than al dente, and the calamansi-patis sawsawan slightly more sour than salty. Followed by ginatang bilo-bilo with langka strips and a curlicue of kakang gata on top, which young heart could ask for more?

One didn’t even have to go to the talipapa for a food trip. If you waited patiently at home, the treats would come.

Itinerant vendors would stroll by with puto-kutsinta, taho, and fresh produce in the morning, including the freshest talangka my Lola would magically transform into the most savory buro, inside which was red-black sinfulness called aligue. Never mind how she did it. (The SPCA did not go after people who tortured tiny crabs by salt-treatment, did it?)

By three o’clock, other vendors would come in succession, bilao perched on the head, basket tucked in the arm, shouting out their ware. We were always in a dilemma which merienda to buy. Corn on the cob? Binatog? Bitcho-bitcho, butche-butche, sapin-sapin? Kalamay, maja blanca? Turon, maruya, lumpia? Carioca? Sometimes, it could be halo-halo, ginatan, or sweet beans with crushed ice – a stall was always a dash away.

Later in the afternoon, a different set of vendors would be passing by, with fresh saging lakatan and latundan, tuba, and paros, a sweetish kind of shellfish we scalded and ate as appetizer.

Nights are stormy when you don’t hear “Baluuuuut….. penoy, baluuuut.” It took me some time to learn which end of the egg to crack so that it opened fetus- side up so I could drink the savory broth-like liquid – never enough, always bitin -- before gulping the whole egg in two bites. No, I didn’t have to close my eyes and we didn’t have an expression then for “yucky” or “gross.”

Mendoza bakery was where we ran to buy galletas de patatas and Marie-like biscuits by the hundreds, at 35 centavos per, when a horde of children was waiting to be fed.

Botika Santos, a pharmacy-cum-PX store, had Horlicks, Baby Ruth, Lifesavers, and Cadbury chocolate bars with fruits and nuts when our sweet tooth craved for something imported and our father was home to give us extra spending money.

When unexpected company came, my mom didn’t panic. A Chinese panciteria at the corner of Solis and Juan Luna, opposite Torres High School was open 24/7 – well, maybe 16/7 –which whipped up miki-bihon, hototay, and sweer-sour meatballs faster than you could say yi-er-san-si- go.

At the Torres High School canteen, there was cake I never could get enough of. It had a chiffon base and a custard-caramel topping and tasted to me like a prelude to something ... uhm .. sublime. Anyway, I would nibble on it morsel by tiny morsel, trying to prolong ... uhm ... heaven. At 25 centavos a slice, and my baon usually only 30, it was often unreachable as the ... uhm ... sky.

Around the school were hawkers unlimited who broke into smiles as soon as the bell rang to dismiss throngs of youngsters. Most of us Gagalangin girls literally ground our teeth on manggang hilaw at bagoong, papayang manibalang at heko, and singkamas marinated in salted water. For the sweeter-toothed, there was ice cream sandwich, tira-tira, belekoy, and Milady (pronounced mee-ladee).

Later, when we were a bit older, after a late-night double-bill movie at Scala Theater on Avenida Rizal, there was no way my sisters and I wouldn't stop at this bamboo restaurant at the foot of Pritil bridge, home of melt-in-the-mouth bibingka galapong and to-die for chewy puto bumbong. Put up in 1938 by Ceferino Francisco, it grew so phenomenally that by the 60s it had outlets all over Metro Manila, including one in the Manila Hotel. Its name: Ferino's Bibingka.

Light years away were Jolibee, McDo, KFC, Pizza Hut, Goldilocks, Greenwich and Shakey’s.

Photo credits: The amazing picture was filched from "Sa Likod ng Bahay Kayumangge," (on which I tried to post a comment to ask permission for use of the picture but couldn't as there was a registration process beyond my ken) which gives a more detailed account of the history of Ferino's Bibingka.

I hope the blogger behind "sa likod" will not mind my taking liberties with the picture. But if he/she does, I will delete the photo as soon as he/she lets me know.

Apologia: Tama ka, Rolly Lampa, it was Ferino's Bibingka! -- not Aling Nena's. Wow, what a memory!

More credits: Salamat po, Mario Silva, for reminding me there was a delectable bibingkahan a jog away from Pritil bridge. Ferino's po pala yun!

Where There Is More Heaven Than Elsewhere (Paying Respect to Gagalangin)

Gagalangin is in Tondo -- as in Gagalangin, Tondo, Manila. But its residents behave as though it is not. It is thinly separated by the unimposing Pritil bridge from the more trouble-prone Tondo of Bangkusay, Vitas, and Moriones, but the residents pretend it is a world away.

Ask a Gagalangin lass where she lives, and she is unlikely to mention Tondo, lest it scare away prospective suitors less fearless and fist-happy than Fernando Poe, Jr.

Kaming mga taga Gagalangin, the old guards say proudly, are respectful and respected.

Taga-rito si Dolphy, King of Comedy, they would tell the uninformed, and proceed to point to where his old house once stood in Sunog Apog. If you had more time to listen, they would probably whisper that Dolphy wanted sorely to marry the mother of his first batch of children, except the family of the woman thought he'd be good for nothing. "Big mistake, huge," they'd probably interject, with a "tsk, tsk."

Ganun din si Tirso Cruz, great band leader, and his famous offsprings. Same with Perla Bautista, Tony Santos, Ricky Belmonte, Gina Pareno. Award-winning movie stars.

Pitoy and Virgie Moreno. Renato Constantino. Atang de la Rama and Amado Hernandez. Armando Malay. Rolando Tinio. Teodoro Agoncillo. Francisco Buencamino, Jr. Vicente del Fierro. Icons of letters and the arts.

They all grew up there, these gentle and genteel people.

It was where I was born and grew up, too. I'd call it the "Gagalangin of my affections," except it is already taken.

The Gagalangin of my childhood was a congenial place where people lived more or less comfortably -- neither too richly nor too poorly. There were very few homes there that would qualify as mansions; neither were there too many rundown shanties. Many residents think it is the best place to live and have stayed put and they may not be too far from the truth.

My family lived in a squatter community, but you wouldn’t know from the way the houses looked.

We had spacious front yards, where we played patintero, piko, and tumbang preso every summer afternoon just as soon as the sun began its downward slope. Being lampa, I was always “it” and ended up “balagoong,” but it didn’t stop the quintessential Binibining Atsay from playing. Anyway, I could often cajole playmates to go inside the house later to play sungka, siklot and jackstone where I was sure to redeem myself.

Our side yards had gardens. My mother tended a proud one that was fed with horse manure, gathered from the droppings of the karetela that plied our street and therefore grew lushly. She had bandera espanyola, san francisco, paco, champaca, calachuchi, chichirika, water plants, and fragrant jasmine, sampagita, and dame de noche that sweetened our nights and our sleep. We also had a guava tree which so became a bone of contention with a kapitbahay who claimed it was theirs that I sometimes wished lightning would strike it down – the tree, not the kapitbahay.

It was much later that the garden gave way to a bigger house to give us children more room to grow. And I guess gardening had to give way to mah-jongg to give my mother more diverting escape from some huge sadness.

Our house had wide capiz windows, the better to watch the santakrusan in May, the prusisyon on Good Friday, and the drum and bugle band at fiesta time. I would spend summer afternoons looking out the window to watch younger children play when I thought I was too old for piko. Weekends were a good time to gawk at folks in their Sunday finery on their way to and from church. I must have watched from the window a trifle too often, for later, high school classmates would refer to me as the “babaeng laging nakadungaw.”

Our house was strategically located near where we studied, Gregoria de Jesus Elementary School and Torres High School. It was also a dash away from the Gagalangin public market (talipapa), St. Joseph Parish, Gagalangin public library, Gagalangin Theatre, Torresian School Supplies, Botika Santos, Mendoza Bakeshop -- Gagalangin landmarks all. As a result, our house was THE hangout of choice. Friends would gather there on the way to the graduation ball, jam sessions, and outings.

In first year high school, six or seven classmates from Maypajo and Caloocan would go home with me to eat their lunch baon at our table and my mom would sometimes serve them hot soup and matamis na saging.

One day, just as we were done with lunch, my Mom anxiously but sternly announced bad news -- she was missing a P50-bill (which could easily be P 5,000 today, given what it could buy then). She apologetically searched through every school bag and purse my classmates carried but didn’t find it. That night, she found the money tucked in a pocket of a soiled duster in the ropero. The following day, lunch was on the house and the classmates cried with joy and relief. But it took me months to forget that most embarrassing moment of my young life.

Six years into my marriage, I left Gagalangin to settle with my new family in Pasig. I visit it now and again, but more often lately -- in my mind.

Some translations:

Karetela - horse-drawn carriage

Kapitbahay - neighbor

Patintero and tumbang preso - team games -- seldom played now -- that required running stamina and quickness/nimbleness.

Piko- a game similar to the western hopscotch

Ang babaeng laging nakadungaw - Woman/girl who's always looking out the window

Ropero - closet for dirty clothes