The Legend of Sinarapan (An Embellished Half-Remembered Boyhood Tale)

In olden days, a fisherman and his wife lived in a hut on stilts upon a delta on the shallow portion of what is now known as Buhi Lake.  Kind, patient and hardworking, the fisherman rowed his wooden boat towards the middle of the lake and cast his net long before the break of dawn of each day.  His daily haul included tilapia, eels, mudfish and catfish.  He was known, most of all, for his uncanny luck of catching carps already distended with roe.  Stir-fried in oil, onions and tomatoes, roe was a delicacy greatly favored by the townsfolk.

The wife was also known for her industry and frugality.  Although small, the couple's hut was always immaculately kept.  After the portion she would set aside for their meals, the fish that that the fisherman was unable to sell were seasoned by the wife with salt, pepper and garlic and laid out in the sun to dry.  When her husband's catch was even more plentiful than usual, she also made fish sauce which, alongside the dried fish, was always in great demand at the town's market.

The couple was, alas, childless.  While they were happy in each other's company, they both yearned for the abiding joy a child would bring to their humble abode.  Wishing, hoping and praying, the couple waited years and years for the wife to conceive.  To their great disappointment, however, the much longed for blessing seemed to elude them

Nearing their middle age, the couple prayed even harder to their ancestral God for the gift of a child.  With their prayers remaining unanswered, the wife slowly became afflicted with sorrow and emptiness.  Biting her pillow at night, she shed bitter tears well into the small hours.  "What good is this life if God chooses not to grant us a child?", she complained one day.  "Without someone to benefit from our labors," she sobbed, "why do we even bother to get up each day?"

Moved by the grief of the fisherman's wife, the couple's ancestral God decided to grant their prayer.  A few weeks after, the wife happily announced to her husband that she was, wonder of wonders, at last pregnant.  The news so overjoyed the fisherman that he worked even harder and was doubly blessed for his toil.  He took great care of his wife and strove mightily to fulfill her every wish.

On the eighth month of the pregnancy, the wife inexplicably found herself overcame with a craving for pomelo.  Her mouth watered at the thought of the fruit which seemed to have lodged itself in her every reverie.  Hard though he tried to comply with his wife's request for a taste of the fruit, the fisherman was, however, unable to find a suitably ripened specimen.  With the season for pomelo long past, what fruit the fisherman could find was either too young or too dried up for consumption.  Knowing how her husband searched far and wide for her desired fruit, the wife did not complain when the fisherman presented her a basket filled with green, dried and shrunken pomelo.

Unable to control her craving, the wife tried eating the fruit which proved to be either too sour or to bitter on her tongue.  She tried to sprinkle the pomelo segments with salt but every bite made her grimace and run to to the window where she spat out the fruit's pulp into the lake.  So sour and bitter were the salted bits of pulp however that, unbeknownst to the couple, the lake's water slowly turned into brine, to the great agitation of its marine life.  In migratory schools, the fish started swimming upstream the rivers that served as tributaries to the lake, to take refuge in outlying fresh mountain waters.  

In time, the fisherman's wife gave birth to a healthy baby boy.  With his wife still weak from childbirth and nursing the baby, the fisherman delighted in rocking his son to sleep and humming bits and pieces of lullabies he seemed to suddenly remember.  The child's little gurgles of contentment filled every nook and cranny of the family's hut with cheer.  The child proved to be a happy baby and seldom troubled his parents with crying the way most infants do.

The couple's great joy was, however, marred by the sad realization that the fisherman had lost his livelihood.  Everyday, long before the break of dawn, the fisherman paddled his wooden boat towards the middle of the lake, only to find his nets empty.  Sadly rowing back to the shore, he was reduced to gathering clams and snails for his family's subsistence.  With the baby slung to a cloth on her back, the wife tried to augment the family's resources by weaving baskets out of dried water hyacinth stalks.

Sadly, the couple's joint effort was not enough.  As the days went by, the family's resources became so depleted they started skipping meals.  The fortitude with which the couple resolved to face their tribulations would break down whenever their eyes met those of their hungry son.  Matters grew so much worse when the child was taken ill for lack of proper nutrition.  "What good is a son if we don't have the means to raise him?", the fisherman blurted out in desperation one night.  "What have we done," he wondered, to deserve this plight?"

The couple's ancestral God heard the fisherman's plaint and, once again, took pity.  Stooping from his celestial perch, he waved his benevolent hands and blessed the lake.  That night, the waters of the lake bubbled and foamed before eventually quieting down.  Looking out from the hut's window the following morning, the fisherman's wife saw clusters of pulp like objects moving in the water.  She called out to her husband in astonishment and, together, they inspected the phenomenon.  Scooping the objects with their hands, the couple discovered that the lake teemed with fish so small which they learned, soon enough, to catch with traps as fine as mosquito nets.

Transformed from the pomelo pulp the fisherman's wife spat into the lake, the small fish proved delicious, nutritious and susceptible to being cooked in varied ways.  The waters of the lake having been restored to its former state, the fish with which it used to abound also returned in due time.  The fisherman's good fortune resumed and even trebled with the addition of the unique marine gift from his ancestral God. Because they were caught by fine nets which, over time, the townsfolk called sarap, the small fish came to be known as Sinarapan.