Because the absence was uncalled for during the holidays. Allow me this post. (even though it's post
paputok season, and even if it sounds like... oh never mind. T_T
Rugby for Noche Buena
Knock-knock went the little boy by my mobile window. He was roughly four years old, I was seventeen. And yet for some reason it seemed as if he knew the world just about as much as I did (even more, probably). Looking into his eyes, it appeared as if he carried the whole world on his back (or at least the weight of the whole world as characterized by his bay sister). Drop a measly coin or two in his hand and they go away. There. They no longer bother me. No more grubby faces sullying my beautiful blue Pajero. I am a really good citizen, tralalalala, happy-happy-joy-joy.
I do wonder if Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution goes backwards in terms of human intellect - we are becoming more stupid than ever. If we really think that all we owe to society would be a few excess pennies then we really are coming down with the dumb and dumber flu.
The roughly-made parols are beginning to dot the streets, along with the tiny yellow bulbs lighting the trees in the outskirts of Quezon, but the faces of the children vagabonds roaming the city remain as dim as taong grasas can smear thick dirt on their faces. Now, irritably smiling politicians come in billboards supposedly greeting their townsmen a Merry Christmas (at manigong bagong taon, mga kababayan!), speaking of a few facilities they’ve been working on, which I suspect, are only put there to create an illusion of activity, of *charity* even and we therefore have to love them to pieces for it – NOT. We do not owe politicians anything, save for respect for authority. It’s the ones in the sidewalks that we do. It’s the ones making do with bridge – bottoms or karitons as roofs over their heads that need our help more. Maybe at one moment you’ve have also ignored a bony kid tapping on your window, arms outstretched. Maybe you nonchalantly reach into your purse wondering when the time will come when suddenly the sidewalks of Manila would be rinsed with a good dose of the cheap, chalky detergents they sell on TV and wash all the grubby faced children off the streets as though they are rapidly-growing bacteria going though mitosis by the minute. Well they aren’t’ really bacteria. But they sure are treated like one.
And Christmas comes this time of year but for these batang-kalyes the holidays sure are yet to come. Not till they are begging themselves off the streets anyway. Just imagine yourself on Christmas Eve enjoying a whole Noche Buena buffet and somewhere in the narrow dim-lit and deserted eskinitas there lies a young boy hardly in puberty, intoxicating his lungs with wood buffer (rugby, that is) only to satisfy hunger for a short while. “Para masabing nabusog ako noong pasko”, he mindlessly reasons. More than the ulcer killing him is the rotting value of our supposedly social sensitivity. Not that we are encouraging beggars to dot our roads but more than that is our alleged initiative to try to eliminate the root cause. And there is just no use trying to name them all for we can go on and on for days enumerating them – corruption, unemployment, low-paying jobs, consumerism, social insensitivity…but what we really need is action. And we need it now.
Whoops, don’t go out giving money away just yet Think: lifestyle check (politics again!) and look out for symptoms of really extravagant living such as five Rolsroyces and air-conditioned lavatories and mineral-water-fed mutts…to think some people can hardly afford salt-fish, or much worse rugby (god forbid) for Noche Buena…maybe a simple Christmas this year won’t be of a huge sacrifice. At least not for the grubby faced batang-kalyes on the street. But hey, it’s a start.
