Donald y yo, el Indio

Donaldo. That’s what I called my favourite cartoon character Donald Duck. This was back when I was a kid who spoke Spanish and would translate my Gold Key Comics Donald Duck issues into Spanish.

Of course, as an adult I would learn that his official Spanish name is Pato Donald, but I had no idea back then.

My aunts – my late father’s sisters (all my father's sisters and brothers are now also dead) – once recorded me translating one of my Donald Duck comic books into Spanish when I visited their house on Maganda Street, which was near Pureza in Sta. Mesa, Manila.

The only thing I remember from that cassette tape – yes, my youth was spent during the pre-CD, pre-internet, pre-mobile phone Dark Ages – is saying: "Una día, estaba en la casa (One day, I was home)."

I had an unusual childhood – an understatement. I learned Spanish before English, because my mother was adopted and my adoptive grandmother and grandaunt were Spanish mestizas (I dunno, a quarter, maybe?) and spoke the language like natives. They would frequently talk to each other and to my mother in Spanish.

The funny thing is that not only did my adoptive grandmother and grandaunt speak Spanish and spell Filipino words the Spanish way when they wrote, but also most of the time their point of view was Spanish. Mainly because their older relatives suffered at the hands of the Katipuneros during the Philippine Revolution against Spain. The details are not really clear to me, but apparently it involved some ancestor of theirs and his properties or something.

Now, don't get me wrong. My grandmother and grandaunt weren't bad people or rabidly anti-Filipino. But they definitely had a different perspective on Philippine history because of their background and what they were taught.

In fact, they would say things like I looked good "for a Filipino". Not bad for an Indio, I wryly told myself, when I learned what an Indio was in school.

The funny thing, though, is that when I go to different countries, I'm mistaken for other nationalities. Here in Malaysia, I'm mistaken for Malaysian Chinese. In Vietnam, as Vietnamese. Indonesian in Indonesia. In Japan, they would talk to me and my daughter in Japanese. They would hand out things written in Japanese characters to us, while giving the English version to my wife.

Even in the Philippines, Filipinos have mistaken me for other nationalities. In a pre-Uber, pre-Grab world, I hailed a cab when I was going home from an event held in a Makati City hotel.

The cab driver cheerfully greeted me in English: "Good afternoon, sir!’

So I said good afternoon back, but was surprised that he kept talking to me in English. Huh, sosy, I thought to myself. Sosy is Filipino slang for upper class or fancy, basically like how atas (sophisticated or elegant) is used in Singapore and Malaysia. Though my daughter and her fellow Gen Z seem to prefer using the slang word bougie.

Now, the thing about me is, unlike some of my countrymen, I know English is just a language. Not a status symbol or measure of intelligence. If you talk to me in Filipino, I'll reply in Filipino. If you talk to me in English, even if you're a Filipino, then I'll reply to you in English. Because I'm fluent in both, can code switch, and am not the kind of person who would keep talking in English to people who are more comfortable with using Filipino, Filipinos who pretend they can only talk in English, or Filipinos who talk in broken English.

We can talk in Taglish (a mix of Tagalog and English, kind of like Singlish in Singapore or Manglish in Malaysia, though apart from Malay and English, Manglish is also heavily by the Chinese languages and dialects here, as well as Tamil) if you're sosy or pretending to be sosy.

So we kept talking in English. I'm dense, OK? It finally dawned on me that he thought I was a foreigner.

So I replied to him in Filipino. He scratched his head, smiled sheepishly, and said: "Pinoy pala kayo, sir! Nauubusan na nga ako ng Ingles (Oh, so you're Filipino. I was running out of English words).”

In April 2022, I was taking my first flight since the pandemic to finally be reunited with my wife and daughter. They had already relocated to Malaysia almost a year ago to that day. My wife’s company wanted her to transfer to their office there and my daughter’s first semester in university was going to start.

So I was going through the airport baggage scanner with my backpack. The female airport security officer standing near the baggage scanner asked, “Have you emptied your pockets, sir? You’ve put your wallet inside your bag?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“How about your mobile phone?”

Realising what was happening, this time I replied in Filipino: “Nasa bag na rin (It’s also inside my bag).”

“Ay, Pinoy pala (Oh, he’s Filipino),” she said in surprise. Then she told me, “Akala ko po, Japanese or Korean kayo (I thought you were Japanese or Korean).”

Because of course I was wearing a face mask as part of the COVID-19 travel restrictions back then. So all she could see were my eyes. I’ve been told over the years that their epicanthic folds look more like those of the Japanese or Koreans, rather than Chinese. I dunno.

Which is cool because I really like Japan. Many things about the Japanese, their culture, and philosophy resonate with me.

Besides, I have no idea of my mother’s mixed ethnicity, if any. Maybe I’ll take one of those DNA kit tests heh!

Meanwhile, one day here in our condo building, back when I didn’t need a wheelchair when leaving the house, I went down to pick up a parcel.

Going back up, two guys used the same elevator. Both were college students.

Our unit is on the top floor. I was wearing a cap and a face mask, even though it's no longer mandatory here, just as in many countries. Because, you know, I'm immunocompromised.

Now, the funny thing was, after the elevator stopped at the first student's floor and he stepped out, the second guy asked me: "So, are you from China or Malaysia?"

I was taken aback. Obviously, he assumed I was Chinese, so it was just a question of whether from here or the mainland.

"Oh, I'm from the Philippines."

He mulled this over a bit, then said, "Manila?"

"Yeah. How about you?"

"I'm from Dhaka," he said.

"Oh, Dhaka! Cool. Nice to meet you."

Then the elevator stopped at his floor, and he cheerily said, "OK, see you around, bro!"

"Yup, thanks, bro!"

Of course, I‘m sometimes even slower to process things these days. It was only inside our unit that it hit me that he must have thought I was also a student or something. I laughed when I told my wife about it.

When our daughter came home from school, she also laughed. She said he must be from her school, too, because he already thought ahead and said that, instead of asking from which country I was.

Anyway, back to the past. I was never allowed to go out of the house and play with the neighbourhood kids, because my grandmother and grandaunt said I would get dirty.

I would watch the other kids playing from our gate, feeling like a prisoner behind bars.

I never experienced the joy of playing marbles in the dirt. I had no idea how to spin a trumpo (top) or kick a sipa.

Sipa literally means "kick". The version of sipa that kids normally use is a lead washer covered with cloth. It's from a pre-Hispanic Philippine native sport closely related to Sepak Takraw, as sipa also has a larger rattan woven ball version.

They all seemed to be having fun. Catching dragonflies. Spider fighting. All the different things children did to amuse themselves back in those days, before screens took over everything.

Not that I didn't get to play. I have two younger sisters. Honestly, though, I mostly remember just playing games and having adventures (like exploring the “wilderness”) with the second eldest.

I also played with some of the kids whose parents were the friends of my mother, including the grandchildren of Aling Tinay. She owned several pigs and would get kaning-baboy (leftover food for the pigs) from us and other neighbours. These playmates would come over to our house, or we would go to theirs.

When I would go to Maganda Street to visit my aunts, I would also play with a Japanese kid who would drop by whenever I was there. He was my first foreign friend.

His name was Haruta, if I remember correctly. I don’t even know how we communicated, since I was better in Spanish than English at the time, and I certainly wasn't fluent in Nihongo.

But even when I was alone, I was hardly lonely. From a very young age, I remember thinking I was different from the other members of my family. Not just because I was an Indio being raised by Spanish mestizas. But also because I couldn't really relate to my parents and siblings.

I sometimes wondered if I was adopted. Or if I was an alien pretending to be human. That would have made more sense to me. Except I looked like my mom and dad.

I would spend hours playing alone with games of my own invention. I collected soft drink bottle caps, and had a whole sack of them, brought home by my adoptive grandfather. Who, by the way, didn’t speak Spanish. He was the one, however, who introduced me to the wonderful world of pro wrestling.

I would wait for him to arrive home while I watched the latest World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) episode. He would then watch the rest of the show with me. We bonded over pro wrestling, which is why I love it until today.

I would pretend those colourful bottle caps that my grandfather brought home – Coke, Sprite, Royal Tru-Orange, Royal Lem-O-Lime, Pepsi, 7-Up, Mirinda, RC Cola, Mello Yello, Mountain Dew, Fress Gusto, Sarsi, Pop Cola, and so on – were soldiers. Or superheroes. No need for plastic soldiers or action figures. No need for someone to play with.

Did I realize back then how strange my childhood was? Not really. This was before the internet made the world a smaller place.

Before social media made people aware of what everyone else was doing. Before children and teens started endlessly comparing their lives with those of their peers, because they could see on Instagram the things their friends were buying, the food they were enjoying, the trips they were taking.

My world as a young Indio was much smaller. Tiny compared to the one that even children take for granted nowadays.

I don’t remember my grandmother, grandaunt, or mother formally teaching me Spanish. I guess I just heard Spanish all the time and absorbed it, just like I did with Tagalog. Or should I say Filipino?

I would hear my grandmother and grandaunt talk about their ancestral home on Benavidez Street, which I would later find out is in Binondo, the world's oldest Chinatown. Their family led a comfortable life, but their house burned down in a fire.

That’s how they ended up in this old house on Samar Street in Sampaloc, Manila. My first home, which they said used to belong to a Spanish boxer. I used it as the setting for my very first short story to be published, “This Borrowed Flesh“. Philippines Graphic published it.

It would turn out to be the first of my three short stories that they would. The second was “Body of Work”, while the third one was “The Rizal Virus”.

My grandmother and grandaunt would talk about their father Manuel all the time. He took on mythic proportions in my mind. I was fascinated by this stranger whom I never met but saw in an old photograph of him with my mom.

He was a Renaissance man who was skilled in fencing, and learned to paint from Don Fabián de la Rosa (who was of course the uncle and mentor of the Philippine National Artist Fernando Amorsolo, though I didn’t know that until later).

Despite the strange environment, I'm grateful for everything I learned from my grandmother and grandaunt, even though I quarreled with them most of the time when they were alive. (I never had an argument with my grandfather, by the way.)

They taught me to value intelligence over wealth, and honour above material things.

This is why they were rabidly anti-Marcos, whom they called cochino (pig). They would rail against his corruption and lies, and particularly bash the dictator’s wife. They were the ones who introduced me to the original LABAN – the Lakas ng Bayan opposition party that they said was founded by very intelligent people.

It was also thanks to their influence that I never developed a colonial mentality or became a full-blown admirer of the US. Even though I did go through a phase when I was young that America fascinated me because of its supposed ideals.

Obviously, they had a different view of the Spanish-American War. They would also insist that Emilio Aguinaldo and his revolutionaries were not actually winning against the Spaniards. To them, Aguinaldo was nothing more than a filthy traitor who had betrayed his fellow Filipino leader, Andres Bonifacio, as well as Antonio Luna.

Suffice it to say, my grandmother and grandaunt took honour very seriously.

Even to this day, I wonder if it would have been better to automatically see the Philippines and Filipinos from the point of view of a Filipino, instead of somehow being a stranger in my own land. I don’t have that kind of prejudice – of assuming that my country and countrymen are the ones who are right, or at least the ones I should support all the time.

That’s why I can relate to the main character of M. M. Kaye’s epic novel, "The Far Pavilions", which is one of my favourite books of all time. An Englishman who was raised from childhood as an Indian, Ashton Pelham-Martyn becomes a person who is free from the prejudices of both the English and Indians, but suffers from ending up as someone who belongs to neither world.

Unfortunately, my father was unhappy that I was speaking in Spanish most of the time. He complained to my mom that he couldn't understand what his own son was saying and that they should put a stop to this.

I don't really remember what happened. Only that my dad told me to stop speaking Spanish. Or maybe my mom did. All I know is that it just started fading away.

After that, my mom would only speak Spanish when she was quarreling with my grandmother or grandaunt.

And, yes, it's true what I remember reading a long time ago in James Clavell's novel "Shogun“. Spanish is the most beautiful language, and also the best one for swearing.

"Thy face in thy mother’s arse,” is one of these colourful curses. If you’ve watched this year's TV series adaptation, you might remember a character saying this in one episode.

I still haven't finished watching the series. I also remember practically nothing from the novel and the 1980 TV series. Which is good, because I'm watching "Shogun" not knowing what will happen, or even how much it has strayed from the novel.

I've often wondered what it would have been like to have watched the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy without having read J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy of novels. Or, as in my case and other people I know, had already read the trilogy multiple times.

I still retained bits and pieces of Spanish when I started going to elementary school. I remember even having difficulty with English words that start with the letter "h", which you don't pronounce in Spanish.

My classmates would also get frustrated when I would unwittingly insert Spanish words when I talked in Filipino. For instance, I honestly thought suelo (floor) was a Filipino word, and couldn’t understand when they insisted it wasn’t.

I can still understand some Spanish – much better than I can speak it, anyway. It came in handy when I decided to take Spanish as my language elective in UP Diliman.

For the most part, I was mediocre, except for that one day when I was able to hold a full-blown, natural conversation in Spanish with our professor, to the bewilderment of my classmates. And, quite frankly, myself.

One time I was at the dental clinic, reading a magazine while waiting for the dentist to finish cleaning my daughter's teeth. Two Caucasian nuns came in, smiled at me in greeting, and sat down beside me.

They started talking to each other in Spanish. I found myself understanding bits and pieces. When my daughter and I were about to leave, I decided to say goodbye to the nuns in Spanish. They were surprised and one of them said my Spanish was good. I smiled and said I knew only a little – un poco.

I keep telling myself that I'll learn Spanish in earnest again someday, through Duolingo or some other language app, because it seems such a shame. I really don't know how you can just forget a language from your youth.

All I know is that I still enjoy listening to Spanish, which is why it's such a pleasure to watch Spanish shows like "La casa de papel", "El Cid", and "Élite", and to listen to Spanish songs.

After all, whatever I might think of our colonisers, Spanish shaped who I am, and it’s still a part of me.

Just like my grandmother. Grandaunt. Grandfather. Donaldo.

Maybe one day.

Una día, estaba en la casa…