THAT is the title of my latest book from Penguin Southeast Asia, whose publication day happened to be yesterday. It’s my seventh book from the largest trade publisher in the world, and I feel equally as excited as when my first book, “Riverrun: A Novel,” came out in April 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The publisher’s blurb noted my conversational and breezy style of writing. Let us have excerpts from my latest book.
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People ask me why I always come home to the Philippines when I have breaks from work. Since Kuala Lumpur, where I work, is a hub for commercial air travel, from there I could easily fly to Sydney, or to Bangkok, or even Dubai.
Well, I tell them I come because it would take me only 3.5 hours to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Manila. And with budget airlines around, the airfare does not leave my pocket in tatters. I also come home to see again my sister, who has Down’s syndrome and is taken care of by her caregiver, and who has done so with love in the past 45 years. And when he can take a break from work, I also fly to Cebu to see my partner again, whom I see about four times a year.
When I came home this time, I noticed the steep spike in prices. The pork and shrimp chow mein at the airport that used to cost P150 is now pegged at P175. And the cost of petrol, as my amiable Grab car driver informed me in colorful language, is so high that he has to jump over a barbed wire to afford a full tank for his car.
The traffic, such as it is, seemed to flow this time. We only ran into a massive jam when we reached Commonwealth Avenue, where the construction of MRT 7 is now in full swing. The condominiums that were just being built when I left in the middle of 2017 are now finished. The Earth has been excavated for new condominiums to rise, so high that they seemed to touch the sky.
And this being the Philippines, lighted Christmas lanterns began blinking the moment dusk fell. Brilliant with light were the images of Santa Claus and his reindeer, with their antlers pulsing with lights of many colors. There were also images of the Christmas lanterns reminiscent of the big ones that I used to see in San Fernando, Pampanga, with their intricate, curvilinear designs.
These lanterns used to cost P3,000 each in November 2009. I remember the price because that was the month my mother died, one month after we buried our father. And that week, our caregiver asked if we were interested in buying a big, colored lantern alive with light. She must have noticed the gloom that descended on our house, so bereft now that my parents were gone, and wanted to give us some cheer. But when she told me a lantern would cost P3,000, I just said “No, it’s too much.” We had just paid the humongous hospital bills and buried our two parents, and our heads were barely above water. So, I settled for a small and solitary lantern done in red and green, twisting quietly in the still air.
During this visit, I wanted to see many friends but the traffic — and the rain that suddenly fell, from out of nowhere — made me stay within Quezon City. I met friends from the Ladlad party-list. I also joined a boodle fight and bingo game organized by the hardworking councilor Allan Benedict Reyes, my friend and my bet for congressman for the third district of Quezon City.
Gladness always comes with grief, the way light is followed by dark and day by night. For the week I came home was also the week my cousin died, all of 54 years old, my cousin Bem gone so soon. We were all muted with grief at her passing, her siblings and cousins in the Philippines as well as in Canada and the United States, all linked together by the worldwide web. It is so powerful, this web that reminds you of the dried, silken saliva of spiders, sending images of life and death from one corner of the globe to the other, with the speed of light.
I also came home to check on my library, which sits in the penthouse of the town house that my sister owns in Novaliches, Quezon City. I always make sure the thousands of books are safe from the rain water and cleaned of the dust and termites that wreak havoc on them. Some of these books I had bought with money I saved from my scholarships given by the British Council, the Fulbright Foundation and the Asian Scholarship Foundation-Ford Foundation. These were books I brought home in my luggage, or sent in cartons that traveled over the sea, fetched by my father at the post office, and installed one by one on the bookshelves of different shapes and sizes.
Some of the books I brought with me to Malaysia, where I am teaching the courses Modern British Fiction as well as Drama, Theater and Performance at the University of Nottingham, where I also work as the Head of School. I brought with me my old copies of Angela Carter’s brilliant book, “The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories,” as well as the stupendous novel “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie and “1984” by George Orwell, a prescient book that seems to have foreseen the many troubles we would face, in the early years of the new century.
Yellowed the pages of the four books have become, but their binding still holds. As I begin to read the crisp pages, I wonder at how time has passed, flying on swift wings. I have read these books before, but after 25 years, I feel I am reading them with a new pair of eyes, and thus reading them again for the very first time.
Reading, like falling in love, is a pleasure that you can go back to again and again. I wish all my readers the enduring happiness of books and love as we move on into the next pages of our lives.
Danton Remoto’s books are available at Fully Booked, National Bookstore, Shopee and Lazada, and www.acrephils.com; Kinokuniya in Asia; and Amazon globally.
