Reincarnation: Believe it or not

Trending on TikTok last Sunday was the post of Veronica Balayo on possible reincarnation. On a recent visit to the National Museum of Fine Arts, Balayo posed beside a photo-oleo of a beautiful woman who resembled her. Caption on her photo read: “Me, now and then?” Posts like these are not new, but what made it personally relevant was that the woman depicted in the photo-oleo from the 1950s is my mother, Belen Raymundo Ocampo. It is uncanny because there is no relation between my mother, who hailed from Ususan, Taguig, with Balayo from Davao. There are actually two photo-oleos of my mother currently on loan to the National Museum photo-oleo exhibition. The first is in wood, a bas-relief, with a photograph of my mother’s pensive face laminated on a wood torso wearing a “Balintawak” of the type she wore working for the Philippine Tourism and Travel Board (the forerunner of the Department of Tourism). Encased in a glass frame, this photo-oleo was one of my grandfather’s prized possessions, a tangible memory of the favorite daughter whose hand he gave away when my parents married in 1958. When my grandfather passed away, his widow (my mom’s “wicked stepmother”) disposed of the photo-oleo by passing it on to me as my inheritance.

The second photo-oleo, which went viral thanks to Balayo, is a hand-tinted photograph printed on tin. Instead of a Balintawak, my mother wears a low-cut dress, her bosom covered modestly with colored flowers. Compared with other photographs of my mother, which includes a cover of The Sunday Times magazine, this is not her best. One day, in the early 1980s, when my sister was on her way home from school in Holy Spirit in Mendiola, she caught a glimpse of my mother’s face smiling from the shop window of an old photo studio on Gastambide Street in downtown Manila. She went in, identified herself as the daughter of the sitter, and offered to buy it. The owner said the photo had been on that same spot since the 1950s and was not for sale. Undeterred, my sister dropped in repeatedly until the shopkeeper relented and gave it to her for free! In both cases, one person’s trash became our family’s treasure.

My mother was an exceptionally beautiful woman and it is my misfortune that none of it passed on to me. Often I wonder how my life would have turned out if I inherited her good looks rather than my father’s brain. Once, while researching in the Mauro Garcia collection at Sophia University, Tokyo, I found photos of Rizal’s mother in a prewar magazine and a 1950s photo of my mother used to illustrate an article by Modesto Farolan encouraging Filipinos to “See the Philippines First.” Growing up, I always thought my mother emerged from a sunlit landscape by Fernando Amorsolo. But don’t be fooled by the photos, she wasn’t a shy Maria Clara. One of the amazing clippings in her scrapbook was a magazine feature on her hair. Not quite Rapunzel-length, but her locks reached down to her ankles. She told me that from childhood my grandfather forbade scissors near her hair. So, in a brazen act of liberation, the first two things she did as a married woman were to cut her hair and make a “trapo” out of my father’s favorite cardigan.

My Facebook post using screenshots from Balayo’s viral TikTok post has gathered over 240,000 likes, over 16,000 shares, and over 4,400 comments. I would love to meet Balayo (my reincarnated mother?) face to face one day. Pending that, I have to finish reading and replying to insightful comments. Cristina Santos Lopez wrote: “I’ve read somewhere that every person in the world has at least six doppelgangers …” Kite Yu declared: “Reincarnation is real guys.” While Gemaecaday Lina Gunay had a different view: “If reincarnation is real, I wonder how many people stare at their own art in museums, listen to music they made in a different life, and read books they don’t remember writing.” Mi Gu Cah was more pragmatic, stating: “We are all recycled materials after all.”

I got recommendations to view old movies like “Somewhere in Time.” Others commented on “Time Travel.” Eirie Zdnam said: “It’s like the story in ‘I Love You Since 1892’ of Ms. Mia Alfonso. The main character is Carmela Isabella [the present] and in the old portrait that she had seen in her Lola’s house was Carmelita Montecarlos. Not sure if I recall the story clearly. Sobrang ganda ng book na ‘yun … even book 2. Nakaka-amaze makita kawangis mo sa old portraits like this post.”

Others posted their own pictures beside paintings and sculptures of historical figures: someone resembled Rizal, another Josephine Bracken, another Saturnina Rizal Hidalgo. Then out of the blue, a photo of Sen. Cynthia Villar with the caption: “‘Di naman ‘yan tungkol sa lupa eh.” And the fitting end to this column comes from Kenneth Rivera who commented: “Well to be perfectly honest, in my humble opinion, of course without offending anyone who thinks differently from my point of view, and by considering each and every one’s valid opinion, without offence I honestly believe that I completely forgot what I was going to say.”

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu