A Story of Human Touch

Katipunan, the nearest train station from where I live, is one of my favorite spots in Manila. Although it looks just like any other Philippine’s bustling stations, there is something compelling about the ordinariness of this place.


To get there, I usually take a tricycle--a Filipino motorcycle taxi with a sidecar on a third wheel attached. With 7 pesos you pay, which is equivalent to 20 cents, a driver will take you to the nearest depot. Tricycle is indeed one of the greatest inventions of the Philippines. It is cheep, convenient and pleasantly thrilling. From the squeaking tiny sidecar you are supposed to be seated with two other passengers, you can enjoy the feeling of breeze on your face, suffocating smell of the diesel fume, tanned arms of the driver that loosely holding the handle, and the sound of restless honking of passing cars and trucks.

From the drop-off point, you need to take a narrow path to the station. In fact, it is this three-minute walk of this bustling street that makes me feel most that I am part of the chaotic scenery of Philippine society. Children are running with barefoot covered with dirt. A street vender, rolling up his shirt to the chest and revealing his thin belly, is talking something in a circle with his companions. Open-air stalls are selling freshly fried fish balls, cut green mangos and watermelons, and high school girls in deep green uniform are enjoying their munchies. A well-dressed white collar young man is waiting for somebody, stepping off a sidewalk.

Here, people of different classes with different backgrounds are passing each other without any sense of boundaries. Even a beggar who spend all day bluntly putting out their hands to reach passersby’s capricious mercy, and an unknown object in the shape of a lying man on the ground which one can hardly tell whether he is just asleep or not, are part of the ordinariness of the daily scene of Katipunan.

A month ago, when I passed this street around 8 a.m., I saw a middle-aged blind man who holding shabby electric guitar slung across his shoulder, playing music. His unenthusiastic performance was inducing lassitude in people and its significant deviation from the image of powerful beat of electric guitar filled me with pathos. There was nobody who took time to stop and listen to him. The empty can of powder milk put in front of him looked awkwardly big.

It was already past 6 p.m. when I came back from the station to the same street to go home. And I found the same blind man from the morning was still performing the same music at the same corner of the street. But this time, there was another man sitting across him, and weakly holding out his right hand in the air. Since the street was already narrow even without the two men occupying the space, those passersby had to make their way through a crowd. And still, the whole scene was nothing special, a mere continuation of daily ordinary scene of Katipunan.

However on that day---the moment when I passed through the two beggars, I felt something ghastly warm and damp caught my arm. The touch was so gruesome to the degree that I had never experienced in my life, but at the same time, it was somehow unforgettably full of life. Before I thought of taking any sort of reaction to this shock, “it” faintly released me, just like a wave once reached the shore quietly ebbing away.

I mastered my agitation and confusion, pretending as if nothing ever happened because I somehow felt that I did not want my Filipino and Indonesian friend to notice it. All I could think of, however, was about that incident that happened a few minutes ago in order to understand what had happened.

Was it just that my fingers accidentally touched the man or, did the man really try to grab me? The heavy feelings remained in my fingers and I felt as if it gradually took hold of my body. It was my first time that I felt so sad from somebody’s warmth-- because to me, a “human touch” had been always something associated with intimacy, affection and care.

After coming back home, I felt a strong impulse to wash my hands thoroughly with soap. And I was shocked to find such temptation in me and felt sickly disgusted. I sat on a chair in the living room, staring my left hand, blank, wondering where this disgusting feeling come from.

And I think that was the shock came from the simple fact which I was made realized that a man who had been a mere part of the daily scenery suddenly became a human being just like me and my friend. It was also the shock that I was unexpectedly made realize that how I was paralyzing my sense, posing barriers around me, consciously or unconsciously, in order to make my life simple, because it is just too painful and troublesome to always sense all the sorrows in the world.

Poverty, discrimination, exploitation, conflict and wars….in the world myriads of problems abound, those experts and politicians try to analyze and discuss those situations all the time. But after all, the all its root causes lies in this simple fact—the intense apathy that allows people to ignore the human touch of others.

I sometimes feel that maybe peace is about sympathy, with which all the people in this world determined to confront this uncomfortable touch of the others. It may not be easy to achieve. However, if you take it to the individual level, it becomes all up to us, to our will and actions whether we can make a difference in the world—and that makes me hopeful about our future somehow. Or I am just too optimistic?