Happy Birthday, Faye!

Lots of things in High School are a blur now. One thing I will always remember was the day I saw Faye, the day I gazed at her eyes and got myself forever enchanted.

Faye, you are the most beautiful and the most important person in my life. And it’s not just me anymore. You are the most important person in Rakesh’s and Kareena’s lives, too.

Together we have been blessed with so many wonderful things and memories. In our life together, we have had the balance of good things and challenging things. We have done a lot of fun things, we have traveled frequently enough and you know we plan to travel more. We have also enjoyed some of the finer things in life.

I am indeed fortunate to be sharing the same bed with you, to have you by my side as we go through the freeways and alleyways of life, to have you as my partner as we raise our two kids.

It’s your big day tomorrow, September 9. Let’s have some margarita later and celebrate. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Rakesh loves you. Kareena loves you. I love you.

The truth that one sees. part 1 of 3

“Baka naman minsan kayo doon ay maligaw. Makita niyo at madinig at maamoy at matanaw. Hindi ako nangungutsya, kayo na rin ang magpasya. Sa palagay ninyo kaya ito sa mata ng maylikha….ay bahay.”

Bahay is a beautiful albeit haunting and poignant song by Gary Granada. I’m not sure if Granada still sings it with the same intensity as he used to. When I heard him sing it 14 years ago I was blown away. Years later I heard him sing it live and it chilled me to the bone. The song is sad and unsettling.

I was born and raised in Manila, in the frenzied streets of Sampaloc. Hence, I wasn’t really oblivious to the poverty of the place. Even so, I was, as I later learned, too far from the truth.

I thought squatters lived in hell in their areas until I actually saw them living along creeks. I did not realize that these inner recesses existed so near my home. I never imagined I would find myself in the midst of this dizzying scramble of people and shanties. I didn’t think that Granada’s song was actually speaking to me. Maybe someday you’ll find yourself there…listening, touching, hearing, smelling, looking.

If the sight of this inhumanity fails to bother you, I’m sure the scent will. It will stick in your nostrils not just because of the stench but also because the image it creates is so unnerving, so haunting.

I wonder how many other “outsiders” have been as close as I have been.  Although as far as the poor there know I’m ever as far. They know that to see, to hear, to taste, to smell, and to touch are not enough to own closeness. Sympathy is simply insufficient.

To understand, to listen to, to breathe in and to feel are never enough to boast closeness. Empathy is just not enough.

To live there; to take in all the stench; to eat amidst the rotten; to sleep and be crawled upon; to be hugged by the debilitating dampness of the night; to feel the excruciating pain of the noon heat pierce intravenously through you; to excrete and not to wash; to bathe with soiled water; to feel hungry and realize there is nothing there to eat; to drink droplets when the thirst is so deep. Perhaps this is how it feels to be poor. Perhaps this is as close as one can get to being physically poor.

Standing there in the slums, feeling fortunate on one side, feeling sheepish on the other, I felt I understood something about poverty. I remember my favorite line in the book The Christ Commission: It is one thing to see through eyes that were once blind but it is a far greater thing to understand the truth that one sees.