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BY RHICK LARS VLADIMER ALBAY
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Tiktik / Tokhang
IT’S the story your grandmother told you on lazy afternoons or on dark candle-lit evenings while waiting for the electricity to turn back on.
A hungry malformed creature that hides shrouded by the night until it echoes out an eerily familiar sound – “Tik tik tik tik.” It resounds like sharp claws tapping on windows, like the beating of heavy wings or a mangled bird call – “Tik tik tik tik.”
The elders warn: don’t be scared when the noise seems loud, because that means the creature is far away. But when it starts to sound muffled and soft, almost quiet, start looking around – it may be right behind you, “Tik tik tik tik.”
On Saturday, a friend and I joined a Halloween Trivia Night hosted by the Balagon Cultural Creatives, entitled Sa Lugar Lang II: Philippine Urban Legends. The organizers grouped participants into eight teams to compete in a quiz-bee-style battle of local folklore and horror knowledge. Our team, Team Tikbalang, won the coveted championship, mostly because of our secret weapon: notable Ilonggo writer Mel Turao.
Inevitably, one of the questions was about the mysterious and noisy creature we’ve grown to fear as children hearing sudden sounds interrupting the silence of the night: the Tiktik.
What stuck with me through the event though was a quip by Karla Quimsing, author of Pansit Poetry, who read some of her works before the quiz bowl started. She shared how growing up along Zamora Street in Iloilo City Proper, it wasn’t aswangs and tiktiks she feared as a child, but drug addicts, thieves and corrupt policemen.
Right now, probably spreading fear in these same communities is Oplan Tokhang. A retraction of “toktok-hangyo” (knock and plead), it’s supposed to be a peaceful and bloodless means to further the administration’s anti-drug crusade, but harrowing first-hand accounts that have recently surfaced paint a much more grim picture.
Philippine National Police records show that close to 2,000 suspects have been killed in police operations and over 3,000 drug-related deaths remain unsolved. Several times has an otherwise peaceful Tokhang operation taken a violent turn – killing not only suspects trying to resist arrest, but also innocent bystanders.
Never has there been a more divisive time in Philippine history as now, when “collateral damage” – the death of blameless Filipinos– is just so easily shrugged off nonchalantly as essential for the “change” we seek.
We read about them and see them on the news: a bloody doll lying next to the body of a 17-year-old girl, innocently caught in the crossfire; a brother shot dead for trying to investigate the killing of his sister, gunned down while riding a jeepney at rush hour in Manila; a mother wiping away her son’s blood from the floor, the scene of a deadly buy-bust operation, only to find a “Pusher ako, wag tularan” placard lodged beneath her altar.
Are these deaths simply the price of admission to the “change” our country wants to achieve?
Many question the need for violence and killings, condemning how police brutality has been made the new status quo by standing orders of “shoot to kill”. Many warn how this war on drugs has enabled syndicates and vigilantes to murder with impunity – unidentified bodies piling up as the number of “collateral damage” rises. Many no longer feel safe in the streets of our country.
It’s not that hard to imagine how in the near future, grandmothers may be narrating to their apos a different tale – about dangerous creatures hiding, shrouded by the night until you hear echoing out an eerily familiar sound – “Tok tok tok tok.”
Don’t be scared, they warn, when the noise seems as loud as sirens, the creatures may still be far away. But be fearful when it starts to sound muffled and soft, almost quiet – “Tok tok tok tok” – they may be just outside your door./PN
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