I am sad over the recent passing of comics strip creator and writer and filmmaker Carlo J. Caparas.
It appears that before his death, he was, despite the presence of his children and other loved ones, a lonely soul.
After his partner, actress and producer Donna Villa died in 2017, we didn't hear about Carlo anymore.
What about his original family who had humble beginnings in Ugong, Pasig City?
Caparas' crumbled family must have been in a quandary even if they have a secure future.
Carlo's life is as beautiful and colorful as his comics novels.
I remember when he was telling us his life story as a worker in a glass factory in Pasig City.
He said that his salary was just a pittance.
But he had tremendous talent of mass storytelling skills and public appeal that made them his passport to fame and fortune.
It wasn't a perfect and ideal life, though, especially when he ventured into filmmaking and had earned more from his komiks writing.
Fame and fortune have prices to pay, indeed, when he decided to split up with his first wife and had fallen for Donna.
We were not privy to their private lives but one could imagine the stormy familial setup during that time.
Everything was quiet, though, on both sides of the Caparases where civility and understanding must prevail.
The other sad part of Carlo's life was when he was stripped of his National Artist award not of his own making but he was part of its sordid outcome just the same.
He was nominated and as a matter of fact, won the coveted plum but the arts community protested massively as other more deserving artists not popular who were deemed embodiment of the aspirations of the Filipinos in the struggle for liberation had been bypassed by the agency. The Supreme Court took that honor away from him.
Caparas must have been the voice of the popular culture until he was wallowed and swallowed by the oppressive system of commercialism dominated by the elite.
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