Wednesday, September 05, 2007 Yap: Matriarch on air By Januar E. Yap Meanwhile
LIKE ships, countries take the feminine pronoun and personality, say, motherland or “inang bayan.” Even war ships named after men still take the feminine pronoun, like USS Abraham Lincoln, “she” who was an aircraft carrier.
Inday Nita’s passing roused a melancholic billow of nostalgia among those who’ve shared with her the experience of the Marcos years. Our commentators and politicians said their piece expressing grief and pride. But I came late, and I wasn’t in the same league.
My clique was a bunch of twitchy hormones, but we knew the country wasn’t in good times. Marcos was automatically National Pulutan. I was too young to drink, but the older boys became instant political analysts in between swigs of cuatro cantos.
Understated amidst these fiery diatribes was a soft core, exemplified by these Inday Nita listeners who, after intellectualizing the state of the nation, recoiled into the sentimentality of dissent. I’ve been trying to ask why.
Well, maybe, when the state of a country regresses, it may be reflex for citizens to retrogress like kids scampering for safety to, say, just about any embodiment of a mother’s comfort.
Inday Nita was that voice—at once soothing and oppressed, an angry and dissenting voice of a mother out to fight for her children. That voice may have embodied the idea of “inang bayan” for the Cebuanos even as we had Cory Aquino on a larger scale.
Edsa I took the personality of a mother, palliative and never adversarial. If you’re in your twenties, you can open any Edsa coffee table and behold the image of women, nuns and children laying wreaths on mortars.
I remember that voice on radio, “Maayong buntag, Filipinas!” with Freddie Aguilar’s Bayan Ko playing at the background.
“Ang lungsod nga linupigan…” and it was either that the women selling their wares in the city’s sidewalks wept or wailed at the unintended agitation the tender voice ignited upon them. That voice carried voltage in the days of dissent.
Well, Inday Nita is gone. We’re left waxing nostalgic being witnesses to the trajectory of her public life. As a reporter, I had the chance to interview her twice, the second time, in her room where her ailment had left her bound to.
This was 2002, her limbs weren’t as sturdy as her spirit. But it was when she went off the record when Inday Nita was starkly candid about her thoughts on the country’s state of affairs. Still sentimental, but never devoid of wisdom. These are from my old notes:
“We still face a lot of problems, a lot still have to be corrected, the way our country’s being managed...I think this is all part of maturing sa atong nasud.
Ako naglaum ma-corrected ning tanan, makalingkawas tang tanan sa kalisud.
And, one more, from Inday Nita:
“It was really a privilege. If you’re sincere, motuo gyud and mga tawo nimo. Kon mosulti ka sa radio, mailhan man gud kon namakak ba ka o wa. I was able to use radio for the benefit of the people.”
