Adrian E. Cristobal, 75
The great Adrian E. Cristobal has passed on.
When I read the text advisory, time stood still to observe the passing of an era. Adrian and my late dad, Blas, were bosom buddies whose lives ran on parallel tracks. Both were college drop-outs, self-taught writers and journalists, and voracious readers. Because they were too much of the latter, no one even bothered to check their diplomas. Learned and knowledgeable are altogether two different things. Adrian and Blas, bosom buddies, fellow travelers, nationalist-writers and public servants were learned and knowledgeable because their hunger to know and learn knew no bounds.
But this is about Adrian, my ninong and personal icon on what makes for good writing. Everyday until he started feeling unwell, he would write for Manila Bulletin a column that cannot and did not exceed 300 words. Writers know that it’s tougher to write with brevity, than to stack one paragraph after another for a never-ending essay. Adrian stuck to the 300 words and produced little essays of dry wit and profound substance. His column space was an open classroom. His pen was a scalpel that gave life to Strunk & White’s stern reminder: Omit needless words. He once told me, if you can’t say it in 300 words then it’s not worth saying at all.
At one time, he sent me a text message regarding a column I wrote for Panorama Magazine. It seemed the column somehow met his standards. Insecure as we writers are, that one-line commendation made my day. But that was Adrian. He was a lovable cynic who knew life and lived it, and was generous and kind to others especially to those who openly seek his counsel. As part of the publications committee of the Philippine Centennial, he was an intellectual/historian/writer who delivered lectures on Andres Bonifacio and the Katipunan. In my mind’s eye, I can visualize how they were like the Knights of the Round Table – Ka Blas, Adrian, Chitang Nakpil, Serafin Quiazon, Florangel Braid,Teddy Boy Locsin, Justice Isagani Cruz, Prof. Jose David Lapuz, Fred dela Rosa, Virgilio Almario, Johnny Gatbonton and a few others, discussing our country’s 100 years with competence, fervor and enthusiasm. They earned their invitation as foremost intellectuals because they knew their history, and better yet, they were able to logically and emotionally connect what they knew to what they see in both present and future. They reveled in recalling the little details and anecdotes that led to the founding of our Republic, and sparks flew as they started their constant debates about the contributions of our heroes. It was the best of times.
Truth to tell, I am scared for a country that is fast losing its intellectuals in an unstoppable divine Diaspora. The brain drain is just too significant to ignore. The nationalist fervor brought about by experience, knowledge, and convictions leaves us diminished, nay impoverished, without even realizing it.
Adrian and my father were Left of center in their intellectually formative years. It was hard not to be that given the economic hardships and slew of injustices that they saw in their lifetimes. But young and idealistic as they were, they did survive and flourish in their lifetimes as writers and public servants. Today, I worry about a regime where intellectual curiosity and assertiveness could cause one’s obliteration. In the movie, “V for Vendetta”, the protagonist said, “Ideas are bulletproof.” Indeed, they are, but the advocates of radical ideas are not. The danger is that the learned and knowledgeable in our society are not being listened to or even revered by the tough, talkative, and argumentative. When conversations about lessons of history in conjunction with civil rights are sneered at or dismissed and replaced with the rhetoric of political narcissists, then where goes the national soul?
I may have exceeded my 300 words.
God bless you, Ninong!
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Susan “Toots” Ople
My friends call me Toots. Am the youngest of seven siblings. Our family hails from the coastal town of Hagonoy, Bulacan and we are proud of our roots. My daughter's name is Estelle and she's a brilliant debater/person. I love dogs! And I enjoy writing in the dead of the night.
I am touched with this article. Truly, time flies so fast and the elder generations are leaving us one by one. This is our era now, and I hope that our era can still make a mark in the literary world as well as the historical biographies. I am one of those readers of Manila Bulletin and I always read Mr. Cristobal’s articles due to the satirical words and interesting topics he wrote.
May he rest in peace. And may our genereation be remembered by the next generation.
Adrian Cristobal is an excellent journalist. I share in your grief for his death but he had lived a full, meaningful life and had left a good example for writers and Filipinos…He will be remembered fondly.
I, too, met and knew Adrian when he was young, already a prolific writer and a cynic, newly married to Tetchie Soriano. I met him when he recruited me out of the Press Office at Malacanang, where, at 15 years of age, I interned as an aspiring journalist, in rebellion of my father’s (Basilio L. Sarmiento, himself a known poet in the vernacular)insistence to make me take up Chemistry, and not Journalism, or Law, which I aspired to do. It turned out he was my older sister’s classmate at Arellano High, so when he recruited me as an unpaid journalist trainee to help with the CPG for President movement, I went, as he was already then a presence in the field of journalism, together with the likes of Johnny Tuvera and his wife, Kerima Polotan, Andres Cristobal Cruz, and others whom I have forgotten, and got to meet his wife Tetchie who was pregnant with their first baby at the time, his brother Efren, who passed on early, and his cousin Cesar Magsino.
Looking back, it seemed I was more like a gofer and nursemaid, than journalist trainee; to Vero Perfecto, who himself, was a known TV and radio personality.
I never quite knew what to expect with those two everyday , they were one and the same, both giants in their field, though Adrian was not as established yet as Vero was, but nonetheless equal, just as genius as was Vero, in their own respective fields. They usually would go out and stay out late, but somehow managed to always do their jobs, last minute, especially Vero. I was so young and insignificant but I was thrilled being in the company of geniuses, and drunks, for that was what they did a lot then…I don’t know what my parents were thinking letting me be with them, but I think those fears if any, did not materialize. They did, especially Adrian, treated me like a younger sister.
Adrian was, and up until he died,if I’m reading obituaries right, remained as committed to socialism. He instilled that early in me, a quality that kept me grounded, even as I married my husband, whose family though humanitarian, are not quite socialists. I remember teasing Adrian when I met with him at his Social Security office on an errand for my sister, how come he lives in a gated community, when he is a socialist, he ran around the office after me for that.
At any rate, I enjoyed my association with Adrian, and he must have influenced me greatly as I grew up to have the same dry wit, same self deprecating humor. I too, like to laugh with friends, but presents a forbidding demeanor outward.
I hope I can communicate with Tetchie, and meet her and their children, and express, and share, sympathy for their loss, for their loss is ours, too, as he was a good man.