Thursday, 09 July 2009

• KABOOM

  Maybe you know your life has changed when the news actually scares you. Really scares you. Sure, you don't understand it as a kid, but even when you do understand it, it doesn't bother you. Up until this year, actually, it doesn't bother you.
  
  And then you're sitting alone in your shoebox apartment, watching the local news while chewing on leftover liempo and wondering what your loved ones far away are up to, and the anchor tells you that bombs are going off in Mindanao, and you're scared.
  
  It's silly. You grew up in Mindanao. You heard these things all the time, scoffed at them, even. Hey, you even had a few brushes with them. The malls in your own city were bombed. Your junior prom had to change venues at the last minute because of a bomb-slash-kidnap threat. Ooh, one summer, foreigners in your village were airlifted to a safer place (a helicopter in the ballpark!), your family had duffel bags of clothes in the hall ready to grab, and the neighborhood installed a siren and ran evacuation drills. When nothing happened to you afterward, you laughed about it and remembered only the scrumptious arrozcaldo they served at the end of the drills.
  
  But in Manila, watching it on the news, you get scared. Does that make you as detached and misinformed about the real situation in Mindanao as you thought Manileños were? Or is it because your own city forms a triangle with Davao and Cotabato Cities, both recently bombed? Is it because your mom drives to that city almost every day, and the rest of your family every week? Is it because you can actually see them in the car, with Dad at the wheel, and Mom putting on her shades, and Lola looking out the window, and Mon adjusting his earphones with his unclipped fingernails -- as if you were right beside them? Is it because, before you can finish a sentence that starts with, "What if -- " you hear the echo of a kaboom in the back of your mind?
  
  (Hey, two of your best friends go to school in Davao.)
  
  And then the papers this morning tell you, the military thinks Manila will be next. You're more inclined to believe that all this is just, as the President put it, "pre-SONA noises;" noises that perhaps her own men set off to lend her a flimsy film of credibility before she gives that big speech at the end of the month. But you can't help but wonder, what if -- (kaboom) -- they're right? What if they -- terrorists or our own military -- strike here?
  
  And here is a business district. Here is a local megachurch. Here is sandwiched between two malls and on top of a tiangge. Here is your apartment, across one mall, close to a busy EDSA intersection, and between two other churches. Here is where you and the love of your life meet almost every single day, to steal an hour or two from desks, deadlines, and the scary news. I mean, what if -- (kaboom)?
  
  You realize your life has changed because you suddenly care about other people. And suddenly, even if they're just a handful of people, they are quite the handful to care about. And apparently, with this kind of maturity comes a matching kind of paranoia.
  
  You kind of can't help it. What if -- (kaboom)?
  
  

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