T-Mac

Last Thursday, we had dinner with the near-legendary Doctor Macario Tiu. I was with Faith, Mel, and Clari and Sir Mac spent almost the entire evening regaling us with his research exploits.

It wasn't supposed to happen but it did. On December 13, Mel texted me if I was the one she saw crossing the street to catch a jeep. I replied back that, no, that wasn't me and asked if she wanted to meet up. Then the ball rolled on. Mel said that we could meet up this Christmas, a mini-reunion so to speak, and invite Sir Mac and have dinner at his house. After that, Mel took care of everything and, as the cliche goes, the rest was history.

So there we were: listening to Sir Mac over a humble dinner in his house in Catalunan Pequeno.

As for Sir Mac, he's now a research consultant for Philippine Women's College and is quite busy with his recent research effort: documenting lumad cooking. He is also delving into indigenous knowledge systems, still under lumad studies (this should be an academic term if only to better recognize it as a legitimate branch of knowledge).

For that night, we went into flashback. We were simply students again listening to a professor's lecture. Sir Mac first talked about the many techniques that he had discovered about lumad cooking (which you'll know as soon as you buy his book when it gets published). Then, he went into why he left Ateneo (retirement and one other thing), his adventures trying to search for Mangulayon, Tumaros, and, lately, Datu Dabao, and the B'laan (the indios blancos).

In the end, he asked us what we were doing, whether we were still into writing and were interested in trying to answer the question: Who is Datu Dabao? It was as if he was trying to see if he had a protege among us, someone who could take up the fictitious cudgels that he had borne throughout his academic career.

Unfortunately for him, I think no one could ever replace a Macario Tiu, at least not among us. The one thing about Sir Mac is, despite the soft-spoken voice, every time he spoke, it always reverberated of passion for the forgotten history of the lumad. And, sadly, that's something that I, Mel, Clari, and Faith do not share with him.

But, perhaps, I do not share this passion with him just yet. Maybe in due time I will.