Halved!

By Emmanuelle

It does not take an old proverb to remind us that half the world doesn’t know how the other half lives. Nor where it lives. Cutting it close, 10% or one half of society cannot begin to imagine how the other half of 90% lives.

As mathematician, this writer is maybe atrociously obnoxious and well-deserving of a fractioned end, an improper one at that. As historian though, she is an old soul. As far back as 1509, a slightly different version of this proverb was found in the works of Philippe de Commines, courtier to Louis XI of France. Commines was the first historian since ancient times to present his subjects critically and philosophically, and he wrote exactly, one half the world does not know what the other half is doing.
  

At that time, this observation was used to apply to those who, from their position of advantage, are unable to imagine the misery of the disadvantaged. To imply, men and women and children who were bred to ease and luxury are not sensible to the mean condition of the greater many.

By contrast, the proverb today, or at least since 1890, is now used more often by those lower in the social scale who takes a privileged glimpse into a more glamorous or socially superior lifestyle.

Transport to the city a promdi sister from one of the far-flung barangays. Not really too far as to be out of civilized reach, but flung far enough as to be devoid of cable TV. Only Willie or Joey blasting each other at the sari-sari store at lunchtime.  A newly-wed sister, who is also a working wife, needs a yaya for her new born.  Who could be a better yaya than one sharing the same blood, or half of it anyway?

It is a seven-hour byahe on the big hot bus, with two stopovers along the highway, to pee and eat and to shake the numbness from the legs. She shakes her head at vendors promising freshness of their wares, totoo po: peanuts, itlog ng pogo, balot, nilagang saba, chicharon, corn, bibingka, macapuno candies. Cold bottled mineral water! She has a baon of rice and dried fish wrapped in dahon ng saging, and bocayo. And straight from home, warm bottled spring water!

At the terminal, she is spared haggling prices with the cabdrivers. She is fetched by the brother-in-law, whose welcome patter is immediately silenced by the intensity of his concentration. Life is cheap during traffic.

She peers out the car window and up at buildings that loom and zoom far beyond the reach of her sunglass-less eyes. And at the march of giant billboards with splayed steel legs. She shivers as she feels pounced on by the enormous faces selling brands and Tlans.  She covers her mouth as she gapes at the malls promising more magic than Benjie’s Magic. She looks wonderingly at people walking, running, climbing, descending pink stairs. She wrinkles her sun-browned forehead at the lines that seem to form everywhere.

She follows with her eyes and her ears the trail of the Metro rails. 

Mostly, she searches hungrily for her patch of blue in the skies. Birds, she thinks, do not fly in formation in this city. Neither do they chirp their gladness at day’s ending. How can these people’s hearts take without breaking the incessant goings, rushing, jumping, piling? Her heart has not even stopped thumping since her bag was almost grabbed at the terminal by eager porters selling homes away from home! 

Her sister hugs her, directs her where to stash her bags. Then tells her to please take over the kitchen at once. A wife have other wifey things to do before the day is done, you know. No, I don’t, she answers but she does not say.

There will be a lot more words left unsaid as the calendar moved on to months and a year. After which, she would be just another city girl forming the end of the line for an interview to fill a position as yaya in Japan.

                                  (To be continued next week.)

(Readers may reach columnist at jingmil@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/
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