The baöng in the mirror

Lately while taking a break from the writing of my Monsoon Riders Series (ahem!), I noticed that I hadn't blogged on old proverbs in quite a while . Reason is, I had mourned – black cloak and all – the death of Ashari Tamano's Maranao dictionary on the internet. See, as I've already confessed in one of my earlier blogs, I'm not an expert on the vaunted art of Ranaū-Iranūn discourse. I'm no Edris Tamano; neither am I a Datu Ontay. My bread-and-butter is a John D. McDonald, Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Jr., and a host of other fantasy, sci-fi and zombie writers. So, for much part of the deciphering process on the deeper meaning of Maranao words I had relied on Tamano's dictionary whenever the signal on the phone of my old folks of Basak gets choppy. I basically used Ashari's because, unlike other Maranao dictionaries I had sampled , he knows the nuances of the language better and his translation in English always hits the mark. While other Maranao dictionaries are crammed-heavy with nouns, Ashary's are profuse with verbs, adjectives, and difficult to handle words. I just wished he resurrect it – or even  better publish it (and I'll be its first customer).

Be that as it may, sans any crutch, here we go again.

Makasōdi si baöng na lêbi sêkanian bó.

The gourd is mocking when he is so full of it.

A baöng before the pre-industrial age is a gourd, usually a coconut shell for holding water (traditionally rainwater) used in cleaning the toilet and other dirty objects in the house. It's not something you want your visitors to see in the living room prominently displayed, so it is stowed away hidden out of sight in the backroom or left in the backyard exposed to the elements.

Coconut shells are plentiful in the Philippines so  they are a throwaway item among the folks in the countryside (Don't worry, they're biodegradable). But not the tin cans and plastic containers  in the cities, which the word baöng had come to embrace, which instead of being thrown away is retained to hold water for washing  the car, flushing the toilet, and cleaning the yard. The baöng, therefore, is a lowly item and its absence (or presence) is never noticed. Anytime it would be thrown into the garbage, and no one mourns its loss.

The baöng in the proverb is personified as someone in society who pretends to be holier-than-thou. Perhaps, he or she is a nouveau rich, a social climber who is relishing the novelty of his milieu, basking in his new mansion (though the neighborhood association suspect the source of his income), and treating his former peers as though specks of dust, peeking at them only on the side mirror of his BMW X5 SUV.

Perhaps, he is someone who failed to graduate his Arabic studies in the Middle East, and now comes back to the country, and bitter from having not been successful, preached with top-heavy lectures, indiscriminately lashing out at everyone he sees as someone destined to the hell fire, while brandishing his boarding pass awaiting his flight to heaven aboard a synthetic Tabriz carpet, to the tune of "A Whole New World" sung by Lea Salonga.

The English equivalent is obviously:

The pot calling the kettle black.

The pot is accusing the kettle of being sooty when the pot itself is thoroughly covered in it. This is one of the rare occasions when we get an apple-to-apple correspondence with the target language.  I like the clipped economy of the Maranao saying which is the hallmark of a quality proverb. No defect is mentioned, just implied in the "mocking" accusation.

The proverb can be traced back to Jesus. Speaking on the subject of judgmentalism,  in the Gospel of Matthew 7:3, he is quoted as saying, "Why look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no heed to the plank in your own eye?"

Perhaps the baöng-gourd in our proverb was having its bliss of ignorance because it didn't have the benefit to see itself in the mirror.  One man did. He sang, rather than said it: “I’m starting with the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways." The song may not be Michael Jackson's biggest hit, but it became a fitting anthem of his passing.

Everyone is accusing everyone of not doing much to the environment. The big nations of the world are bullying the smaller ones about industrial pollution but they themselves are so sooty of it.

Corollary to this is yet another clipped interrogative proverb of the old folks. "Sorong ka sa pagalungan, na antona aī mīa ilay ngka?" Have a peek in the mirror, now what do you see?  This is an implied admonishment not to be unduly critical of others.

So goes our proverb: Makasōdi si baöng na lêbi sêkanian bó.

The gourd is mocking when he is so full of it.