Manila Street

by raimperial

It wasn’t at all like what one would have imagined it would be. On the street there were no bickering sounds of traffic, no family-owned pick-up trucks, no smoke-belching public transport buses, not even flamboyantly decorated jeepneys. There was hardly anybody within the vicinity. The sidewalk was as placid, pristine and crystal-clear as a mountain lake; unobstructed by public commuters, jaywalkers, pickpockets, high-school dropout gangs; free from the wrath of noisy vendors who usually sell cheap cigarettes and bubblegums apiece, unleaded gasoline in graduated Coca-Cola bottles, disheveled tabloid papers hung on metallic alambres, charcoal wrapped in overused rice-mill sacks, and pirated DVDs of films still waiting to be released on cinemas, among many others.

And the air smelled of cleanliness. Garbage cans placed across the road in perfect order, like Buckingham Palace foot guards on duty. There were no landfills, no shanty towns, no one squatting under bridges or flyovers, no one urinating by the roadside. No political posters. There were no humongous billboards of sexy dim-witted celebrities. The buildings were equally ordinary, yet exuded an atmosphere of classy, sophisticated modernity. High-rise windows reflected the immaculate sky, as if entirely pasted on the surfaces, cumulus clouds swimming from one glass panel to another, while the ground, humbled by gravity and elevation, was carpeted in asphalt and cement and some tiny patches of green where tall angsana trees stood in all their restricted majesty.

After standing under the sweltering sun for as long as I could imagine, in the midst of all awkward seemliness and civility before my very eyes: it dawned on me, like the bland aftertaste of an initially shocking revelation – like a watered-down realization – that Manila was simply just a name.