BIZ BUZZ: Robina Gokongwei and her ‘python twin’

It was a presocial media fake news that evolved into an urban legend over the decades. The tale even influenced pop culture as it was featured in one of those “Shake, Rattle and Roll” flicks.

As the legend goes, the daughter of this wealthy businessman who owns a shopping mall has a twin “sawa” (python) that lays golden eggs, supposedly the source of the family’s wealth.

But the sawa devours women—and only beautiful ones at that—so the rich family built trap doors under the dressing room to swallow ladies that would be offered to the snake.

Such python talk used to get on the nerves of Robina Gokongwei-Pe, the “human twin” of the legendary python, when she was younger.

“It was nakaka-irita (irritating), especially those who believed,” she told Biz Buzz, when asked how she felt when she first heard about it.

These days, however, it’s just something for her to laugh about. She could even crack a joke about it.

In her speech at the signing of the renewal of sponsorship for the UP Men’s Basketball Team on Wednesday, the godmother of the Fighting Maroons told the team: “Manalo, matalo, may buffet pa din kayo at raffle, at love ko pa din kayo. But manalo kayo kahit isang point lang kung hindi ipapatuka ko kayo sa kakambal kong cobra. (Win or lose, you will still be treated to buffet and raffle and I’ll still love you. But please win even by just one point, or else, I will ask my twin cobra to bite you).”

“Yung mga tumawa yung mga matatanda (The ones who laughed were the older ones in the audience),” Gokongwei-Pe said in jest as she narrated to Biz Buzz the event of the Nowhere To Go But UP Foundation, held ahead of the opening on Saturday of Season 87 of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines, hosted by the University of the Philippines.

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After all, today’s generation of Maroons may not have even been born yet when the legend of the sawa first captured Filipinos’ active imagination.

To this day, Gokongwei-Pe said they had never been able to trace the source of the tale. She could only recall that this started when the group opened a Robinsons Mall in Cebu.

“How it started, I think we were the first national player that entered the province,” she said. “But why it (legend) stayed [alive after so many decades] we don’t know.”