Death and life

By Marifi Jara

QUELIMANE, Mozambique–It so happened that the book I was reading last week was A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby (multi-awarded comic writer of, among other books, About a Boy which was made into a film with gorgeous Hugh Grant in the lead). It’s a funny book about a very serious subject: suicide.

Suicide is the most personal and saddest of deaths. People die from old age, ailments, accidents, in war, or murder, but these are not deliberate and none, like suicide, is a deeply private decision and act.

I was about halfway into the book, enjoying lots of laughs from the narrative of the main characters — four very different people who end up becoming a barkada (a “gang”) after their failed attempt at suicide, all on New Year’s eve at the Toppers’ House rooftop, a popular jumping point for suicides — when news came out of the suicide of former General Angelo Reyes.

I know it sounds gallingly self-centered but to be honest, that spoiled the fun I was having. I started to rush into finishing the book, eager to come to a happy ending, wanting to find a closing scene that isn’t the same as that of Reyes’.

Well, life, or “truth” to quote author Mark Twain precisely, “is stranger than fiction”. (That quote continues: “but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”)

A lot of reports and commentaries have been made about the general’s suicide and about the man himself, but we will never really know what exactly were the thoughts in his mind and the feelings in his soul when he decided and actually did top himself. What we only know for certain is that he made that choice for himself. Life, for the rest, goes on. And so must the Senate inquiry, and the government’s quest for that matter, to address corruption in the Philippines. Many Filipino lives would be much better without all these fraud.

Speaking of life, all the steaming political news in the past weeks has left little public attention for most other news like this month’s celebration of National Arts Month. And while not directly associated to that occasion, how timely that the newly-formed Danggoan na Pangasinan group staged its first performance last week featuring the province’s arts and culture in songs and dances.

The gringes in our midst would say that it is pretentious to celebrate the arts, culture and all that fluff what with the persistent poverty and corruption and all the other mess that the country is in; that it is nothing but a caprice for the snobbish elite.

I would strongly beg to disagree. Everyone can appreciate music, can’t they? And don’t we all love a story?

Celebrating culture, history and the arts — with the grassroots — is a sharing of our souls, a recognition of the continuity and oneness of a community, a rejoicing in our humanity.

It is an affirmation that despite all the wickedness and the troubles in the world, there is beauty in life.

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