Do I Have To?

My interactions with rice have always been tainted with guilt. At the tender age of nine, under the disapproving eyes of my mother and aunts, I would devour one whole bandehado of rice--equivalent to about three cupfuls--on regular meals. When the viand along with the rice was a favorite, like talunang manok or talangka, I could chuck in another cup or two. One of the more famous stories my relatives love trading around the reunion dinner table is of how my mother once tried putting me on a diet. When she brought me to my Lola’s house for our weekly family get-together there, she put the big bandehado of rice all the way to the end of the long narra table—and well away from my reach. Whoever was telling the story would start shaking with laughter as he or she recalled how I looked longingly and with such hunger at that pile of rice after I had finished the half-cup my mother had placed on my plate. It got so bad that a single tear escaped and rolled down my cheek. My lola, when she saw that tear, started cursing everyone at the table for their cruelty—“Hindi na kayo naawa sa bata!”—then she proceeded to grab the bandehado and plonk it right in front of me. No surprise then that I became quite pudgy—and my cousins and friends would often taunt and tease me about it.

The worst of the lot would be the grubby boys of our truck mechanic. And too bad they also happened to be my favorite playmates. Sometimes, since these boys lived just a stone’s throw away, I would go home with them when their mother, a big-haired, gap-toothed woman who looked perpetually pregnant, hollered her “Oy, mekeni!” in a voice like a foghorn. For merienda, Aling Syoneng would often serve us a peculiar sort of lugaw with regular long-grain rice cooked in lots of water and flavored with white sugar. She’d sit at one end of the table and go slugging away on a bottle of pale pilsen while watching us eat. If I stayed long enough I sometimes saw them cook rice and ulam not on a stove, but by using panggatong. One time, when I tried helping by loading some more wood to feed the fire, I lost my balance and burned my leg. When Mother found out how I got the burn, she lectured me on how I shouldn’t impose on the pobre mechanic’s family and how they have little enough to eat without having an extra mouth—mine—to feed. The next time I ate at the boys’ house was several months later. I was served biscuits and coffee at the wake of Aling Syoneng who had died of cirrhosis.

When I was diagnosed as a juvenile diabetic due to obesity and old enough to have an interest in boys as more than just playmates, I went on a strict diet that limited my caalorie intake. That meant going from several cupfuls of rice every meal to a cup or less. I shed a lot of pounds—and wouldn’t stop. When I started looking like a walking pile of fish bones and getting sick almost every month, my mother put a stop to the nonsense and ordered me to eat. I obeyed, but not without feeling like I was doing my body a disservice every time I did so. It was only when I took up running as a P.E. course in UP that I started eating sans the accompanying queasiness from guilt.

As a college dormer in Diliman, I survived on instant noodles and canteen food so I never learned how to cook. It was a different story though, when I went on to stay in UP as a full-time teacher. I had my stomach to appease, I was getting sick of fast food, and I had a boyfriend to impress. Being the staple, rice was top priority. I faced the challenge of cooking with much trepidation, considering that another famous story in our family is how I almost burned our house down by boiling an egg and then promptly forgetting about it. The by-product of that experience was a blackened lump in the middle of a smoking Teflon pot never to be used for cooking again.

My first attempt was a huge letdown. I put in just enough water to cover the rice instead of following the 1:1 ratio and, of course, the grains failed to fluff up and cook completely. With a sudden attack of conscience from knowing how many mouths two gatangs of rice could feed, I sadly threw my failure into the trash.

With all these unpleasant memories, I should’ve given up entirely on rice. But it’s such a pervasive part of our daily lives. What needs to be done is to found fond memories of the vexing grain. Maybe in doing so, I can make peace with it and, eventually, lay all this guilt to rest.