By Rex Catubig

 

THE seasonal high tide brought on by the lunar cycle aggravated by monsoon rains and storms has made Dagupan vulnerable to constant flooding, and the unkindest cut of all, vulnerable to unreasonable bashing and name calling: DaguPond Seaty, Bangusville, Waterworld, are but a few of the water cannons hurled at it.

Flooding has become a horror tale in our water-bestieged city. It is a magnitude 10 on the inconvenience scale and a vexation of Biblical proportion among the Neptune haters–because aside from wreaking havoc on properties, it makes simple everyday routines such as commuting or going to the market, a voyage in the manner of Poseidon Adventure.

Yet, Dagupan is not an isolated case. It’s not alone in its aquatic misery. Much as the flood mongers tout it as the most flood-cursed, other places have seen worse scenarios and suffer more than bashers could ever wickedly wish for the city.

While I empathize with the flood endurers, especially those affected by the perceived insane elevation of the city’s road network, I welcome the inevitable. Everyone, at least that’s a water-tight presumption, is aware that Dagupan is a swamp land and river country, and is below sea level. And grade school science has pumped into our brain the empirical evidence that water seeks its level. So, it is not far-fetched that our beleaguered city is easy prey to inundation.

Unless, the city builds an embankment all around its perimeter so water will not rush in like a gush of fools, no canal system, no floodgates, no flood mitigation program will ever work. Unfortunately, the road elevation is the closest the city can get to flood salvation–short of getting Moses to part the floodwaters and command them back to the sea.

Looking at the height of the road elevation that has drawn the most flak, and the unconscionable pelting of the Mayor with hailstones, as if the fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, I wonder if it has occurred to the critics that even if the height of the road were cut in half, those along the side would still get flooded, granting the elevation is to blame.

For what does it matter if it were lower? Would flood water recede in respectful deference?

Oh, that’s too much water for the brain to absorb.

But that is not my central thesis. I am not a technocrat, nor an engineer nor a soc-med sorcerer.

What keeps me riveted in the issue of flood is how the young deal with it. I mean the very young whose DNA has not been tampered with, and contaminated with the paralyzing virus of arrogance, ignorance, and rigid mindset that even the psychic power of Uri Geller cannot bend.

Do the young feel the same way, are they even bothered?

During a connivance of rain and high tide, when the flood level rose to its highest, I saw this boy with a makeshift fishing rod doing what I thought was the apex of foolishness. While I was getting alarmed as I saw the flood water encroaching closer to my house, he seemed delighted and saw something different. He seemed to see a pond teeming with fish. And readily, he took his fishing rod and cast it into the floodwater. It was a strange sight but it became clear to me that it takes the mind and imagination of the young to turn around an adult nightmare and spin it into a child’s fancy dream.

Oh, to be a child again: “To see a world in a grain of sand. And a Heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand. And Eternity in an hour”.

It may not change anything. It will just dry out our flood fears, assuage the stress of the ebb and flow of living in a coastal city.

“Delap ka labat. Dagupeño ak!”.

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