Our loving ways – Filipino Culture

“Mahal kita, mahal kita, hindi ito bola.”

The phrase is the first verse line of a song which was written by a teenager, so said a DJ of the time, in the early 1970s. That’s almost four decades ago. And yet we still hear it played on the radio, especially around this time of the year.

The line literally means “I love you, I love you, I am not joking.” Bola means a ball, as in basketball. To “make bola,” a patent and peculiar English Tagalog statement, derives from Tagalog: e.g. Binobola mo lang ako, which implies saying untruths but in such a charming manner that what the speaker says appear to be true. It’s related to “binibilog ang ulo,” literally making a head round — bola (ball) and bilog (circle) have the same shape around. It remotely recalls “drawing circles” around someone.

To make the title of this section sound closer to English, then: “Seriously, I love you.” That deflates the statement though, since the translation is bereft of all that affection in a Pinoy’s wooing of a woman. Affection and the lightness of language — for she, if Pinoy, too, knows he can just be saying it but not truly meaning it, so he enjoins her at the end of the line plaintively: do believe me, hindi ito bola, seriously, peks man, cross my heart and hope to die.

Deep down, the Pinoy knows words are just that — words. Sounds articulated by the vocal cords. Nice to say, good to hear. They need not always carry the weight of truth. And we’re adept at manipulating them. It’s a cultural attitude to language. We’re not supposed to believe everything we hear.

Verbal meaning is kahulugan. The root word is hulog which means “fall” (nahulog sa hagdan — (s)he fell down the stairs) primarily and “partial” (hulugan — installment) secondarily. So there are always implications and nuances and the truth is more in them than in the words themselves. So, the bearer must be assured by the speaker — Hindi ito bola.

Oral speech especially is, then, a game. Politicians are masters of the game. Quezon and Marcos were acknowledged orators who exhibited their genius for bola in public fora here and abroad.

Love in the oral level is a game. There is the pursuer and the pursued. And there are the arrows of words to slay the wooed into a belief. Even in the written certainly, the attitude to language is the same. No wonder then that the perennial best-seller continues to be a thin book of samples of love letters. In Tagalog, that is.

Where is the truth of the loving, then? In the acts of loving, in the action of love — especially those which are not meretricious; those which do not advertise the feeling of love and loving behind the act and actions. Wala sa salita; nasa gawa. Not in the words but in the actions.

How does one show na hindi ito bola? There is a cultural context to it, of course. As red roses in the west. There’s the gift giving, too. However, traditionally it’s pasalubong — bringing someone a gift since (s)he was not there when the giver was. A gift to show that one remembered. Valentine’s Day is a foreign idea which has not yet seeped into our traditional cultures.

However, let me dwell on it a bit. Red is the emblem of the heart (so very bloody, though!), as roses should be red if one wishes to get across love as the message of the giving. This one day even old people won’t feel corny wearing red shirts or red skirt. I know, in fact, a few who have Valentine’s Day attire which they take out only once a year.

In the 1970s, there was this red-and-white taxi named Alfredo’s. On that one day, riders who wore red or red-and-white were entitled to a 50% discount. See, how far we can go! Luneta (national park) in those times bloomed in red. That one crazy day!

They are not that crazy in Japan. Primarily, it’s because the culture which Valentine’s Day still tries to penetrate does not possess the articulate meretriciousness of ours. Theirs is an oppressed society — oppressed by feudalism, which continues to fuel it. Their extreme behavior on this day consists of a mild reversal of roles, namely, the girls can gift the boys with chocolates to express their feelings. And that’s confined to the young. Just the young.

Let me contrast that with a story in Tacloban, Leyte (Eastern Visayas). A couple which had been married for almost three decades had seven children between them. On Valentine’s Day morning, the husband forgot to greet his wife. She let it pass. In the evening, he came home a bit tipsy. He had forgotten completely that it was Valentine’s Day. When he was changing his clothes, she threw her slippers at him. Love and loving, we expect even after decades of togetherness.

Our loving ways by Edilberto Alegre