MEDIUM RARE

Looking back at the damage left by Covid-19, most of the friends that you and I lost did not die of the virus but other diseases. The pandemic claimed many lives around the world, but there were other losses, other disruptions, not all due to Covid.

Mini, small, and medium businesses were forced to shut down, just look at the one-door shops on EDSA that have yet to be revived; four, five years later no one has given their former owners a helping hand to stand up again, pick up the pieces to restart.

The only disruption I dare to speak about, since I am but a fencesitter, is all about the end of something as petty but as valuable as our eating clubs, as we called them, small intimate groups who met more or less regularly on a certain day of the week to break bread, exchange gossip dressed up as news, news that would never make it to the headlines.

Tuesdays, we had our Bulong Pulungan at Sofitel hotel, going back to 1986, with Deedee Siytangco as main organizer because as one of President Cory’s Tres Marias in Malacañang’s communications office, it was easy for Deedee to invite guests who were “in the news,” good or bad. There was another Tuesday Club, this one starring the heavyweights – Chitang Nakpil, J.V. Cruz, Adrian Cristobal – who met in one of Larry Cruz’ restaurants around Remedios Circle to swap hifalutin commentaries against the lousiest or, pity the lot, the least articulate politician of the week.

Thursdays was open house nearby at Myther’s tailoring shop, where journalists Andy del Rosario, Roy Acosta, Nestor Mata, Ninez Olivarez et al. listened to or joined Nanoy Ilusorio and Myther as the two exchanged notes and memories of great sporting events, complete with scores and scandals – fantastic how they recalled numbers and figures, including the years when those events happened, given that the discussants were not historians backed by an army of researchers.

Do not blame Covid, but today, five years later, the characters of whom I speak – once upon a time my colleagues (except Myther) – are no longer around, and that is why, as far as I am concerned, the institution of the weekly just-between-us-folks affair has been disrupted, perhaps permanently.