By Rex Catubig

 

SHE was scheduled to leave for Baguio that sultry afternoon. Not to take a breather from the oppressive July heat, but to scout possibilities for building a movie house there.

Youngest brother Kerwin had developed a passion for movies and as a doting sister, she helped him start up his film showing business. They leased the Vida Twin Theater owned by the Villamils. Kerwin managed it since she knew next to nothing about movies. But she did the negotiations and deal-making.

That fateful day, she had a meeting with suppliers of the family grocery business. As business talks went, she got carried away in the spin of conversation until she realized it was already too late to take the trip.

To while away her time, she decided to peep at the movie being shown at her brother’s movie theater. She casually sat down in the orchestra and tried to focus on the screen though her mind kept wandering into that business venture in Baguio.

Showing on the screen was the newly released romantic action drama starring the love team of Rudy Fernandez and Lorna Tolentino. The title was “Ayaw Matulog ng Gabi”, directed by ace-director Carlo Caparas.

In hindsight, the movie title smacked of the boding “sleepless night” that would later happen.

Stirred by the sight of their movie idols, and the plot twists and turns, the excitement of the adoring audience was palpable and doubled the heat index inside, despite the furious whirring of electric fans.

Then midway through the movie, there was a sudden jolt, followed by violent shaking as the twin cinema rocked and rumbled, and seemed to rip apart. Getting a fleeting glimpse at her watch as she gripped the arm of her seat, the time jumped at her: It was four twenty six.

The swaying and shaking roused the moviegoers from their seats. They jumped up, climbed over the seats, and dashed to exit at the entrance.

Being seated at the back, the big sister had the presence of mind and instinctive fight-or-flight response. She ran to the entrance and fully opened the doors thinking rightly it would prevent a deadly stampede. She even helped raise up those who had stumbled and risked getting stepped on and killed.

She found it pathetic, however, that at the height of the mad rush to get out, she caught this elderly man trying to break open the cash register of the canteen and scoop the money with his scrawny hands. In a fit of frustration, she berated him: : “Ay agi, anta asingger ki lad ipapatey, mantatakew ki ni!” The old man was dumbstruck and scurried out as fast as he could.

Mayor Belen remembers all this vividly as she undertakes her program of disaster preparedness. “Handa ka ba?” is her shibboleth for safety.

At ground zero, of the July 16 devastation that fell Dagupan to its knees, she was an unlikely heroine just like in the movies. She stood there hapless as the ground liquified, the streets cracked open and spewed mud and putrid water. But thank God, in that instance of great trial, she mustered the courage to help save limbs and was spared the horror of casualties.

When she finally got out of the building, after checking that everyone had safely evacuated, she saw her ravaged, earthquake torn city, almost unrecognizable, a no man’s land. Mixed emotion swirled on her head, the thought of ruined business insinuated itself, but she quickly dismissed the feeling of dismay. Instead, her anguished heart turned her thoughts on her family: her venerable A-ma, her mother, Remedios, her father, Jimmy. She worried about how they were. But with her uncompromising faith that she shared with her mother, she knew they were ok. And, indeed they were.

But in retrospect, she realized that she herself teetered on the edge that day, was in harm’s way, but for the grace of God.

What could have happened if she had made that trip to Baguio? It’s a well-worn cliché that things happen for a reason. Plans that did not happen, schedules that got screwed, life rudely interrupted, the hex of hassles. They trigger a grr reflex, which makes one feel being buried under a debris of misfortune.

Yet were it not for that stroke of happenstance, the cut or curve in the linear occurrence, where would she be?

“Kaya ako”, Mayor Belen intimated “Hindi ako naa-upset kong ma-delay man ako”.

Because, she knows intuitively, that in time, she would arrive where she is going, unintimidated even by the harsh flash flood of political diatribes.

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