Kinaiyang Sugbuanon

A long time ago, while I was a young student at the University of the Visayas in Cebu, taking up a strange-sounding course called AB General, I came upon a sight I did not expect to see in a school.

While watching the girls go by to pass the time before the next period, I saw two male working students struggling up the stairs carrying a wicker basket. The basket, called "bakat" in Cebuano, was filled to the brim with steaming hot "pan de sal."

More working students followed, carrying more baskets, and they went from classroom to classroom to distribute the bread for free. Just to be sure, I got my share of two pieces first before asking what was going on.

I was told it was the birthday of Josefina Rivera Gullas, wife of university founder Don Vicente Gullas. The bread was her treat to the students. The simplicity of the gesture gave away the sincerity of the giver, and made the pan de sal taste like something truly special.

It is gestures like these that, in their rarity, people will treasure always. The good feelings they evoke with each recall serve well those who were blessed to have experienced them in their lives.

Good things always come in handy in the rough and tumble grind of daily life. They provide release from tensions, the balm to soothe away disappointments, the pillow upon which to rest expectant hopes for a new tomorrow.

Things are not like that anymore. The innocent pleasure of a hot pan de sal has given way to impersonal things like, say, gift certificates, where the object is to ensure the gift will be liked, instead of touching a life by the act of giving itself.

As we move deeper and deeper into modern living, modern living itself transforms us, our attitudes, our relationships, our environment. We become detached from the original concept of why we were made in the perfect likeness of God himself in the first place.

Have you ever wondered, for instance, where went the open fields that allowed boys of my generation to play tough and hardy games that tested and prepared us for manhood? We emerged from those years bearing the scars that made us value things like sacrifice and discipline.

As I wrote this, the big news in Cebu was about a female nursing student from one of the leading universities who was to have graduated in a few days but who was shot and killed instead by drug addicts who wanted nothing more than her cellphone.

I remember a time when it was still safe to walk anywhere at 2 a.m. People who meet on the streets do not get violent on account of each other's presence. It was a joy meeting other human beings who were, at the very least, respectful, greeting you a good morning or evening.

There is no going back to those times. But there is a way to open a window to the past, to at least show the generations of today some snippets of a time upon which was founded the strength of character responsible for building this nation.

Those whose whole beings were forged in those trying but noble times went on to become the responsible parents of today who, by dint of hard work, discipline and prayer, were able to educate and prepare their own children for what will be their own lives.

On March 15, two days after the birthday of Nyora Pining, her son Jose " Dodong " R. Gullas will open one such window and treat Cebuanos to a glimpse of that by-gone era at the Cebu International Convention Center.

The presentation, called " Kinaiyang Sugbuanon, " will be a song, dance and poetry package. But do not let it deceive you. The arts is just the medium. What will actually be laid bare is the Cebuano, the heart and soul of a true Filipino. Come, reconnect with who you are.