Maharlikan

I remembered back in history classes, during otherwise boring lectures about Manila-centric colonial past, defeated battle heroes, and a poem hinting about Filipinos being hostages to an uncertain future, a certain topic jolted me out from stealing a nap in the middle of an afernoon lecture under a hot tropical sun (to this day, I remained baffled why some school administrators see to it that history classes be held right smack during siesta time, as if to instigate a personal revolt in the name of one’s body clock). The lecture classified the early pre-colonial society of native Malayan ancestors as the Datu (the ruling elite), the Timawa (neither nobility nor slave), Alipin (in a stroke of seeming sophistication, these were further classified into aliping sagigilid who served and lived in their masters’ houses for a lifetime, and the aliping namamahay who served for a certain time and also independently owned houses). Then, there was the Maharlika.

The Maharlika was a freeman. Perhaps he was freed from the bondage of his previous master, perhaps he fought his way in becoming one, or he must have, as most of our Malay ancestors did, crossed the wide perilous seas on a swift and sleek outrigged boat called balangay and dashed away for freedom towards an archipelagic cluster of islands far in the outskirt of the Pacific Ocean in which his confused, colonial brainwashed, culturally clueless, art unappreciative, advertising puppeteered offsprings now called – the Philippines.



I will decide to go against the flow of mediocrity and decadence prevalent in a naive society. Even if need be, I can choose to travel alone and not fear solitude, but I will never be lonely. I am with the stars and the stars are with me, just as the Maharlika must had felt when he gazed on them as he journeyed with his balangay with nothing but the vast seas in his midst, in the name of Freedom. I will do the seemingly formidabe and daunting task, i.e. free oneself. And since decades of Americanized education resulted to seeming proficiency in using the English language, I will call myself Maharlikan.

Why don't you.