PUNDAHAN: A store with the Indang touch

The municipality of Indang possesses an array of cultural practices, with some, if not all, still being practiced in today’s modern era. One of these is called pundahan which is practiced in Brgy. Mahabang Kahoy. You might think that it’s a store that sells bed and pillow covers but it’s actually pretty similar to a Filipino sari-sari store. With its similarities also come its differences, because with pundahan the people who practice it only use vegetables, usually ones they grew themselves, for their main merchandise, and sometimes only for display and they usually setup their pundahan stalls in the afternoon. Because of this, Indang is sometimes nicknamed as the “Vegetable Basket” of Cavite.

Ria Pejenia, a resident of Brgy. Mahabang Kahoy, practices pundahan every day. She uses her own crops for her pundahan store, but she also sells firewood and some food. She said that the term “pundahan” originated from Indang, and is only used in Indang, because other cities and states mostly use the more commonly known terms “talipapa” or “gulayan”. An Indang local, she observed that almost all families set up their own pundahan, whether they have a store or not. She also noted that the ones who don’t have a store have their pundahan made usually from bamboo, with a roof made from dried coconut tree leaves, and then they display this in front of their houses or their fields, with someone taking watch, but she mused that there are times when people don’t watch over their pundahan anymore since they feel that nobody will take an interest in taking or stealing their vegetables.

Lika Babaan, an eleven year old girl, and her family also has a pundahan of their own. She always has her school on a half-day schedule and when she gets home, she eats lunch then opens her family’s pundahan. She’s always trusted in watch over it. The vegetables in her family’s pundahan also came from her family’s small garden, with her mother and father harvesting their crops and Lika watching over the stall. She watches over their stall with a weather eye, but there are times when she goes back inside their house in case she needs to do other things, and their hasn’t been any case wherein the vegetables in their pundahan have been stolen.

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