Desaparesidos, Chapt 2, Excerpt 1

Mula sa ikalawang kabanata

…

HINDI tanga ang militar. Bigo man silang “pakantahin” si Tatay Dencio, kinamatayan man nito ang pagtatakip sa manugang at mga kasamahan nito, alam nila na hindi nito matutunton ang anak kung walang rebelde sa loob mismo ng munisipalidad. Pinaghinalaan nila ang mga tagabaryo, tinalasan ang mata at pakiramdam laban sa bawat isang lalaki, babae, bata, at matanda. Ginawang suwertihan na lang ang laban. Alaberde na lang, bahala na si Batman! Sayang na lang na sila’y sundalo kung hindi nila kayang ipagtanggol ang bayan! Sinona ang mga baryo, pinababa at minasaker ang maraming ama, hinamlet ang iba pa, hinugot ang mga tao sa katwiran na hindi mabubuhay ang isda kung walang tubig; hindi makakapamayagpag ang mga rebelde kung walang taong-bayan na kukupkop at magpapakain sa kanila.Tumawid ang gulo hanggang kabilang munisipalidad. Dinukot ang political officer ng isang unit at ni bangkay nito ay hindi na nakita pa. Ni-raid ang bahay ng isang kaalyado na ipinapalagay pa naman nila na pinaka-safe sa lahat ng posibleng takbuhan sa pinakagipit na kalagayan… paano nangyari na kung alin pa ang iniisip nilang pinaka-safe, ay siya pang unang napasok ng mga kaaway?

“Pinagdodoble-ingat tayo ng mga nasa itaas. May ajax daw sa atin.”

Napatingin siya sa mukha ni Roy. Napatingin din kay Roy ang iba pa. May kabadong tanong na sumungaw sa mukha ng bawa’t isa. ako ba iyon? Pinaghihinalaan n’yo ba ako, kasama?

“Kailangan din nating lumipat ng lugar. Anim na buwan na tayo dito, baka tukoy na tayo. Mainit ang kalagayan.”

Napayakap nang mahigpit si Anna sa anak. Paano na sila ng baby niya?

“Paano na kami ng baby ko, Ka Roy?”

“Gusto mo ba munang lumabas?”

Natigilan siya sa tanong, nagtalo ang isip sa pagitan ng oo at hindi. Nababasa ba ni Roy sa mukha niya na paminsan-minsan, sumasagi din sa isip niya na gusto muna niyang lumabas alang-alang sa kanyang anak?

Pero, saan naman sila pupunta ng baby niya? Uuwi ba siya sa bahay ng kanyang mga magulang? Delikado siya roon, na-raid na iyon noon. Saka hindi niya alam kung welcome pa siya sa magulang. Ang alam niya hanggang ngayon, sinisisi siya ng tatay niya na kung hindi sa “kalokohan” niya, hindi magugulo pati ang buhay ng lahat.

Kung mananatili naman siya dito, paano ang baby niya? Paano ang kaligtasan ng baby niya?

“Iniisip ko lang ang baby ko,” sabi niya.

“Maiintindihan namin kung gusto mo munang lumabas.”

“Baka pagsisihan ko. Baka araw-araw, gusto kong bumalik.”

“Kailangan ka namin dito, Ka Leila.” Leila ang pangalan niya sa kilusan. Walang taga-kilusan na gumagamit ng tunay na pangalan.

…
 

An Older Interview: Who’s Afraid of Lualhati Bautista?, Part 2

Continued from yesterday…

Original source here.

What is your writing style? Do you, say, start work on a novel and then at mid-point, leave it for a while and start another one? I don’t do that. I finish one thing at a time, I don’t overlap writing commitments. For instance, at the moment, I’m supposed to finish seven scripts for the NCCA. I’ve already done two, five more to go. So I tell people I can’t start work on another project for the next two months. By then, however, I’ve already set my priorities for the succeeding periods of time. And if I don’t like certain projects, I tell people right away. Interest in a project, for me, is very important. If I have the slightest doubt about a project, I don’t accept it.

Favorite work
From everything you’ve written, do you have any favorite literary work?
Ah, ‘yong ‘’Bata, Bata…'’ pa rin. “yong ‘’Deakada,'’ mahal na mahal ko ‘yon. With ‘’Bata, Bata…,'’ my enthusiasm never died down. When we were doing the movie, I was attending presscons and premieres. Of course, I also treasure my having done ‘’Dekada,'’ but ‘’Bata, Bata…'’ had created a greater impact in the market.

How would you describe your style in writing? Any disciplines you observe?
None. Even with young writers, I tell them not to observe any guidelines. They should feel free, they should experiment. They should discover and develop their own bent.

Can you cite two things you love about yourself?
I love feeling free. I love locking myself up in my room. I love being able to go wherever I want to go and be with the people I want to be with.

Two things you hate?
My smoking, I’ve long wanted to give it up. And then there are the tantrums I can’t control. I wish I could be a more diplomatic person. Like Marilou Diaz-Abaya, she can say anything in a nice way. For example, I wouldn’t be reluctant to ask at the recent Famas awards: How could I win for Best Story when I was not even nominated in the Best Screenplay category? It is through the screenplay that one learns about the story.

Citations
‘’Bata, Bata…'’ garnered a lot of citations from award-giving bodies this year…
It won Best Picture and Best Screenplay from the Urian. Best Picture and Best Screenplay from the Young Critics Circle. From the Famas, Best Story.

Where did you get your idea for writing ‘’Bata, Bata?'’
The idea came from a long period of experiences of being a woman. When I was a young girl, the little boys would jump over flower pots and people would think that was OK. But when I did it, they would say: ‘’Ka babae mong tao, ginagawa mo ‘yan!'’ And then, the young boys could slip a note into young girls’ books to propose, but people wouldn’t expect young girls to do the same.

If we were in an ideal world, you would say that even the girls would have the right to propose?
I have taken that right a long time ago!

How much of yourself do you see in Lea Bustamante?
A big part. Everybody’s been accusing me of that. A lot of her feelings and sentiments are mine. She had my heart.

When I was reading your novel, I told myself that what I was reading was true. That the writer was not simply fabricating things.
Through Lea, I had an opportunity to say whatever was on my mind. Like, when we’re mad, we curse.

I read a lot of that in your novel.

Real life
That happens in real life. So why should it be any different in a novel or a movie?

When Raffy and Ding were leaving Lea, she didn’t fight for the custody of her two children, she allowed them to make their own decision. Would you have done the same thing in real life?

Lea is confident of herself. She trusts in the love that she has shown her children.

The last time we talked, you were saying that you were working on a new novel.
Not exactly new. I started working on it in 1993, but I’m not done yet. I can’t tell you the theme for ‘’security'’ reasons.

How does the rest of 1999 appear to you?
There’s still a lot to be done. It was high gear in 1998, and it’s spilling over to 1999. But probably, in the next few months, I’ll declare a time-out. I need time for myself!

('’Bata, Bata…'’ the stage play, will be shown in August, 1999 at the UP, AFP and Greenhills theaters. For inquiries, please call 893-4492.)

For bulk orders and discounts, please call Cacho Publishing House, +632/6318361 or fax +632/6315244.
 

An Older Interview: Who’s Afraid of Lualahati Bautista?, Part 1

Here’s an interview from 1999. Catchy title.

You can go to the original Philippine Daily Inquirer page here.

Who’s afraid
of Lualhati Bautista?
By Abet Zialcita
http://www.inquirer.net/saturday/jun99wk2/spc_3.htm

WHEN I was leafing through the pages of her novel, I couldn’t help but wonder about the writer behind the scenes that were playing in my mind. The lead character was a woman who didn’t have qualms about her values. She was outspoken and oftentimes candid. She could even be comical at times, without meaning to. And how she loved! When I decided that I wanted to produce her ‘’Bata, Bata, Paano Ka Ginawa?'’ onstage, therefore, I told myself that I would soon discover how much of Lea Bustamante was in Lualhati Bautista. I guessed right. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

AZ: How long have you been writing?
LB: I started writing when I was 16. By then, I already had a published work. But I had been writing stories since I learned how to read and write.

Ideas
What inspires you to write? Where do you get your ideas for your stories?
Iba-iba. I get inspired by what I see. There was a time when I was really moved when a child was run over by a speeding car. I felt at once that I wanted to write about what had transpired in his life before the accident.
Siguro, madaldal akong tao. I like telling stories. When I was still studying, madalas akong pagsabihan na ‘’very talkative'’ ako. My teacher would often tell me to keep my mouth shut. Then I finally decided to just write down the things that I could not blurt out.

So what happened was, the things you wanted to say but couldn’t, you translated into writing.
Yes, I wanted to tell stories. There were many things I wanted to share with the others. Like when you discover or experience something new, and you’d like to share it with a friend.

Can you recall your very first published work?
It was about a childless couple. They were able to adopt a child from the streets.

Was that inspired by a real incident?
I don’t remember. At that time, so many things were running in my mind. Wild things, even. Until now, when I’m all by myself, many things still enter my mind. Like, what would happen if I was given a hundred thousand pesos each day and that at the end of the day, by twelve midnight, I should have already spent all of it?

Voracious reader
Were you a voracious reader when you were young?
Lumalaki ako sa Liwayway. I read a lot of komiks and listened to radio dramas. I guess, the last one I had to, because my mom was a lover of soap operas.

Were your dad or mom also into writing?
My dad was a poet and a singer. He was a recording artist.

He must have influenced you in some ways.
Oh, yes. He also composed songs. He was a musician–he could play the piano, the guitar, the violin, the trombone. My mom couldn’t find time to write. But the few times that she did, she also displayed some flair and style.
In your formative or later years as a writer, was there any author or literary piece you admired most?
When I was young, I liked reading the writers of ‘’Liwayway.'’ They were my early models in writing. I liked their language, I envied the fact that they could narrate stories effectively. I developed a crush on them. And I got married to one of those writers!

Your husband was a writer before?
He still is. He writes stage plays. He’s more of a theater artist than a novelist. He’s in his element when he’s involved in the theater.

Stage actor
Is he also an actor onstage?
Yes, that’s in addition to also being the scriptwriter and director as well.
What about you, have you also been involved in the theater?
Not really. I’m more of a writer. I have the moods of a writer. Like, people would ask me why I shun award ceremonies. But I really hate dressing up and applying make-up! When they tell me to go up the stage for an award, I tell them that I am being penalized for a job well done.

But, as you were saying before, you won’t describe yourself as anti-social.
Ah, hindi. Hindi naman. I’m simply more inclined to join the family and a few close friends. But, of course, if I really have to attend an important function, I can easily put on the mien of a seasoned politician.
There was a time when we were in New York and we had to attend an after-dinner party. I was in T-shirt, maong jeans and rubber shoes. And then I saw the guests: the men in coat and tie, and the women in their stiletto shoes. Everyone else appeared to be taller than me but I didn’t allow myself to be intimidated.
What I did was, I took off my shoes, sat down on the carpet, drank a lot and made a lot of noise. After a while, the others were also taking off their coats and shoes, and everybody really started having fun.

Chito Roño says that you’re a writer who has successfully transcended almost all literary types of work–from novels to movie scripts to short stories to tele-plays to komiks…
Ang sabi ko nga sa kanya, e, bright ako! (Laughs).

Different literary types
From among these different literary types you do, is one you like more than the others?
Gusto ko silang lahat– for different reasons. Like, for instance, when you’re writing for TV, it is easier since the production costs are not as big as those in the movies. The movies, on the other hand, are also fun to write but they entail greater collective work among many people. By contrast, when I do a novel, it is mine and mine alone.

You have full control over the material.
Yes, but writing for the movies pays higher. With the novels, you only get paid the moment they are published, the moment they start selling. That’s what happened to ‘’Bata, Bata…,'’ ‘’Gapo'’ and ‘’Dekada ‘70.'’ They are selling up to now. Although, when I wrote these novels, I didn’t think of money. I wrote them for the Palanca competition. I wanted to win. But then, I had to momentarily drop the other things I had to do.

What is your writing style? Do you, say, start work on a novel and then at mid-point, leave it for a while and start another one?

Itutuloy… 

PDInquirer interview, Part 2

… continued from yesterday

Click this to go to source link 


Writing about the intense days during martial law is something she had wanted to stop doing after “Dekada ‘70” and two or three other teleplays about the period, says Bautista. “But there are still so many stories waiting to be told about that era.” While set against the backdrop of those turbulent years, the two novels are also vastly different: “”Dekada” is more about a family outside the movement, a mother on the outside looking in. This is really more about a mother who changes her perception of herself and of society (because of her son’s activism). ‘Desaparesidos” is about people inside the movement, young people who lived the horror of militarization during the martial law period.”
“Desaparesidos” might as well be the story of her friends, she says. “Before and after martial law, there were many disappearances. Charlie del Rosario disappeared; I knew him in college. Henry Romero disappeared; he was my friend and godfather to my firstborn.”
Not that things have changed much, she acknowledges. “What is the difference between martial law and the years after if people are still being killed all the time, if they keep disappearing because they are presumed to be enemies of government?” she asks. “I may not know her personally but I feel the pain of Edith Burgos over her missing son, Jonas, just as I felt the pain of Gina de Venecia when she lost her child in a fire. I feel bonded with all the mothers who lost their children in the past and present regimes. Whenever I read about Edith’s search for her son in the papers, I want to hug her even if I tell her nothing because even a writer can be at a loss for words.”
But as harsh as that reality is, Bautista also defines “Desaparesidos” in a different, albeit just as traumatic, context in this novel. Not only does the term refer to friends and kin who were deemed disappeared or missing because of state or military forces, the word also speaks of the disappearance or absence of activist parents in the lives of their children as they elude arrest to pursue their revolutionary goals.
Again, personal history has a lot to do with this insight. “When my children were very young, I could not leave them with just anybody,” recounts Bautista. “But I have known mothers in the movement who did that. Mas mabuti ba akong nanay kaysa sa kanila, o mas mabuti lang silang anak ng bayan kaysa sa akin? (Am I a better mother than them, or are they better patriots than I am?) Hindi ko ba mahal nang sapat ang bayan ko para iwan ang mga anak ko, o hindi nila mahal nang sapat ang kanilang mga anak? (Don’t I love my country enough to leave my kids, or don’t they love their children enough?) I have no answers to that.”
In fact, she adds, the questions she raised in the novel about commitment, priorities and choosing between family and country should not even be asked of those who had to make that difficult decision. While she writes of truths that she has come to know and of people in such circumstances, it is not for her to judge them nor direct their lives, she says. “When I write, I do not think of my characters as my creation; I think of them as real people. I don’t direct them, I just follow their story.”
Her next novel, to be serialized in a vernacular magazine, similarly follows the story of women in their sixties who are fighting to live their own lives, refusing to become wards of their children and nannies to their grandchildren.
But how typical! After a novel on the “disappeared,” trust this unconventional writer to focus next on women who have finally found themselves.

“Desaparesidos” is available at all National Book Store branches.

For bulk orders and discounts, please call Cacho Publishing House +632/6318361

Fax +6315244

Free delivery within MetroManila 

PDInquirer Interview, Part 1

Before we start posting excerpts from Desaparesidos, we will share a couple of interviews with the great author herself. (We have gotten permission from bnoth the author and the interviewer).

Here’s the original link:

http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/sim/sim/view/20080615-142756/Her-Fathers-Daughter

Her Father’s Daughter
By Pennie Azarcon dela Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:17:00 06/15/2008

MANILA, Philippines - She has written novels and screenplays on subjects other writers dare not touch: strong women defying conventions (“Bata, Bata, Paano Ka Ginawa?”), a conflicted family coming to terms with martial law (“Dekada 70′), life among women inmates (“Bulaklak sa City Jail”), and ac-tivist parents agonizing over children waylaid in the confusion of a military raid (“Desaparesidos”).
But there is one movie that prize-winning novelist Lualhati Bautista dreams of doing someday: a small independent film about her father, Esteban. A sometime real estate agent, musician, photographer and singer, this father of nine is best remembered for the boundless imagination that gild his homespun bedtime stories.
“When I was very young, my father had this telescope and together, we would peek at the stars,” recalls Bautista in Filipino. “One time I asked him, how can I go visit those stars? And he said, someday, I’m going to build a ladder that you can climb all the way to the stars. I asked, and what about you? Are you coming with me? And he said, no, I’m staying down here to catch you should you fall. But I’m sure you won’t fall. Because you are not afraid to climb.”
Adds Bautista: “My father opened my imagination wide. At night when it was warm and we couldn’t sleep, he’d fan us till we dozed off. Sasabihin niya, kunwari daw, inihaw na mais kami! (He’d say, just pretend that you’re corn on the cob, grilling.)”
From him she got her love of words, recalls this writer whose first story was published when she was 17. “My father was a composer, singer and writer of poetry,” she says proudly. And so Bautista wanted to be two things: writer and singer. “But singing was out of the question,” she confesses. “Once my brother told his friends defiantly: “Ang kapatid ko ay isang mahusay na manunulat! (My sister is a good writer)! I just happened to be singing at that time.”
Well, one out of two ain’t bad. By the time Esteban Castel Bautista died on Valentine’s Day in 1992, his writer-daughter has become a household word in Filipino literature, while he remains very much in her mind. “I want to write about the music of my father’s violin,” says Bautista. “That music used to wake me so I won’t be late for school.” She adds: “I want to write about him and his kindness together with all his imperfections, especially when I read or watch something that portray fathers in a bad light. Gusto kong ibangon ang dangal ng mga ama, gano’n (I want to restore our faith in fathers.)”
Reading about fathers in Bautista’s novels is definitely something to look forward to. Fatherhood is a subject she rarely tackles in her novels, most of which portray female characters breaching boundaries to redefine their role in the family. Bautista’s latest work, “Desaparesidos,” tells of how one mother retooled her life to look for the toddler she had entrusted to another activist in the heat of a military operation during martial law.
The circumstances hit close to home, the writer confides. “I had very little political consciousness when I got married,” says Bautista. “But my husband was an activist. I would not say that I joined the (underground Left), only that I joined my husband. It was his life, not mine. But I could not live his life without losing mine in the process.
“Three months later I left. I was pregnant and had a 3-year-old boy in tow. I had no money, no place to return to, no work because at that time, even a writer had to get clearance from the Office for Civil Relations, otherwise, no publication would accept your story. And I was too proud to go home to my parents.”
She continues: “When I think of that young woman kissing her husband goodbye and walking down the street holding her child’s hand, trying to look brave and planning only where to sleep that night, I feel very very proud of her. I was that woman, and I’ve come a long long way.”
It wasn’t an easy leave-taking, Bautista recalls. “Before I left, the other people in the movement offered to take care of my son. Of course I said no. Imagine leaving my son with (people who were on the run?) What if something happened to them? Where and how do I start looking for my son? I even imagined how the military could use children against their parents when they get caught: ‘talk, or we’ll kill your child while you watch!’ It had happened to others. I think in a way, as early as 1973, I was already sowing the seeds for this novel.”

Itutuloy…