I come to validate this thought when I heard of the death of a sidewalk vendor whose face I would see everyday in the route to my place of work.
Biak-na-Bato Street, Quezon CityI called him ‘Tay or Manong as I didn’t know his name. He was one of the many familiar faces and nameless people, like those of the jeepney drivers in our subdivision, barkers, mall guards, churchgoers, beggars and sidewalk vendors on street corners and bus stops along my usual route to work, that I meet everyday. A smile then and now, and a familiar look.
He must be around 70, lanky, with square shoulders seemingly propped by a clothes’ hanger. His skin was brown as the soil, the texture like prunes. I’d almost always see him wearing faded shirts and faded shorts.
He had a kariton, a wooden box the size of a regular office table, but with extended post in each corner above the surface, which was covered with recycled tarpaulin. He had a wide variety of merchandize—yosi (street term for a cigarette), gums and candies, biscuits, pens, instant coffee, mostly 3-in-1’s, and tabloids, among others. I was his suki, or regular buyer, of his instant coffee and Skyflakes crackers.
He would stay in a portion of an asphalted street (I always wonder why sidewalk vendors, even with such a name, would rather stay in a portion of a street than in the sidewalk), near a sectarian school on Biak-na-Bato Street. His regular patrons were those passersby that go to offices and residences around the area, those going to the school, to a huge Dominican church nearby, and to loading/unloading zones along Quezon Avenue.
His very visible position was a stone’s throw away from the spot where two holdup men were gunned down by the city police two or three months ago, and very near to an LTO office where cunning and very accommodating fixers abound, in spite of the sign that says “Bawal ang Fixers Dito (No Fixers Allowed).”
The last time I asked Manong of a packet of 3-in-1 coffees from his mobile sarisari store, he was fanning himself with a folded tabloid. “Naubos,” he said with a toothless grin. And that was two days before I heard of the news of his death.
Manong was a victim of a hit and run. He was crossing the four-lane Quezon Ave. grasping a bottle of Red Horse beer in the part of that stretch of the road where pedestrians are not supposed to cross. A speeding van hit him before he could reach the other side.
He was gone like a cigarette smoke, a nameless death. He was erased from the surface of the earth, which even any memory of him would soon go away like his bloodstain on the asphalted road. But why did I care if he died that day, tomorrow is no different than yesterday, except the absence of the familiar kariton on its usual spot.
The next day when I went to work, I bought a 3-in-1 coffee from another store. And while sipping my cup, it comes to my mind: That there is a world I am in and there is a world I am just passing through. And how I sometimes bother things I couldn’t reach, or things that even death couldn’t treat with respect.
