Kitty Litter

It's been some time since the squatter colony near our house has held a funeral on the street. Their area faces a major, four-lane (okay, maybe three, but it depends on what's parked there) road, so they can take over two lanes, sometimes three, when they hold a funeral.

So when I drove past there a few nights ago, I was forced to swerve because there was only one lane left open to traffic. The coffin itself was on the sidewalk, fronted by the requisite gambling area. I hope no foreigners passed by, because last I heard, only the Irish drink in front of corpses...but they don't toss their beer bottles under the coffin or put food on top of the coffin or use the area under the coffin as a garbage bin.

O-O

In a cab yesterday, the driver was listening to news about the Wowowee stampede. The old bloke was shaking his head and tsk-ing. Seems the people outside refused to leave in hopes of seeing the show go on.

"People have died and you want to go on?" spat the cab driver in Filipino, more to himself than to me.

The interviewer corralled an Aling Juanita at the Medical City, and she told a horrible story of being helpless, of being pinned under six dead bodies...which was probably what saved her.

I know what she meant. I once got caught in a small mob outside the Supreme Court while waiting for Wynn's bar results several years ago. I'd stupidly parked myself in front of the gates, not realizing that the bar results were going to be posted where I stood.

When the mass of lawyer hopefuls came crashing towards me, I discovered a new level of fear: not being in control. I was swept off my feet, pushed and pulled this way and that, and my pleas to let me through ignored completely. If anyone tries to tell me that lawyers are dignified, I dare them to stand in the way of the bar examinees when the results come out.

I was somehow spat out of the mass of people, and I leaned against the gate for support. There were no people in that crowd, just a mindless mass of squirming things who wanted to know whether they'd passed the bar or not. Nobody's safety and well-bring mattered to any of them.

That was a smallish crowd, just about a hundred. According to reports, Aling Juanita was up against at least thirty thousand. Imagine her fear at knowing that nobody in that giant crowd cared whether she lived or died.

Aling Juanita told of men pushing against the railing, climbing over the barricades and trampling on women and children to get into the ULTRA. In an anguished voice, she told of being trapped outside when the security guards locked the gates to protect the premises.

"Poverty is what caused this. These people wanted a better life," someone said.

"Bah," snoted the driver. "It's not poverty. Those people were the victims of someone else's greed."

Unable to resist, I asked, "Sir, whose greed?"

"People like them, those who wanted the money."

And I knew that he was referring to people who didn't t care that they might have killed someone weaker because they wanted a million pesos. People who placed a value on someone else's life; one million pesos was enough for them to forget to care that someone else stood in their way. What's worse is that they probably don't know what they did, and don't care. The mob, the herd took away their capacity to reason, to think, to care; all they could think of was "I want a raffle ticket."

Look at the roster of victims and you'll see no able-bodied men among them; they were mostly women and children. When the finger-pointing is over, when the bodies have been buried, was a million pesos really enough incentive for whoever trampled them to shatter the lives of those who lived with, loved, depended on these women?

I guess they literally voted with their feet, because their heads weren't available.

Death is cheap, I know that. But who was it who once wrote that how we honor our dead is how we are as a people? Manong Taxi Driver understood that better than me. The question is now whether those who trampled the victims understood--or at least even knew--what they did. If they felt some remorse then it would be good.

But those interviewed who claimed they were with the earlier crush mostly said they wanted another shot at getting into the ULTRA. The deaths didn't matter to them; one even jokingly said "We weren't the ones who died anyway." Others milling about the disaster area were cheefully waving banners and hands at the cameras. It was as if no one cared.

When I drove by the funeral area tonight, the coffin was gone. But the beer bottles (now broken) and the garbage was still there.

And you have to wonder who you are and how you fit into a world where too much human behavior can't be justified even if it were animal behavior. Are we really set above all other creatures? Last time I checked, there was always a good reason for animal fights: territory, food, mates, defense of offspring.

How do we justify trampling other people to death, then not caring, if we truly are the highest of creatures? If you know, help me understand.