Saving the World Bumper to Bumper
The wishy-washy weather the past few days has been a bane for the commuters. On my way home from the office the other night, the dark clouds gave in and rain suddenly poured as soon as the sun dived to its exit. I opted to take the jeep to the MRT station and finally got a wet seat by the jeep’s entrance after 50 other passengers ahead of me.
Ayala was, quite typically, dark and dreary. Our jeep crawled like a turtle as threateningly huge SUVs honked their honkers as they zoomed right past us. I realized that the traffic was not so bad after all seeing that the other cars were moving at a relatively fast pace. Suddenly, our jeepney coughed black smoke several times, shook like a freezing chihuahua and stopped in the middle of the road.
After a minute, the frail driver went down with a towel over his head, and signaled the cars behind us to move to the other lanes. I felt terrible for him as I looked at his worried wrinkled face. None of the passengers dared to go down as the rain fell quite stronger by then, and the area where we had stopped had barred sidewalks. I was honestly tempted by my silly conscience to go down and help the poor soul push the jeepney as I felt that being the person by the jeepney’s entrance, I was somehow obliged to do it. Mid-way into my thoughts, our driver waved to another jeepney before coming back in on the driver’s seat. As if understanding some sort of baseball signal, driver B immediately maneuvered his jeep and positioned it directly behind us.
At this point, I already had an idea of what was about to happen and was quite impressed by the level of concern driver B had for our driver, and transitively, for us as well. At the green light, the jeepney behind us gently stuck its nose onto our bumper and pushed our jeep at an ever so slowly pace for the whole 2 kilometers to EDSA. I imagined the two jeepneys looked like two turtles crawling on the wet pavement much to my amusement. I stared at the bumper-to-bumper spectacle in front of me the whole time as I thought it was awfully absurd and at the same time touching to see that class of “bayanihan” first hand, in the impersonal and skyscraping world of Ayala.
When we had reached our stop, the jeepney behind us slowly moved backwards to give way to the exiting passengers. I tried to sneak a feeble smile to driver B as if it were enough to gesture a “thanks,” as if he saw it, and as if my feeble attempt mattered. Whether he did it out of kindness or for any other reason, what matters, I think, is the message we got-or what I got.
Thank heavens for these little anecdotes that make this city, this country, this world, a warmer place to live in, despite the rains, despite the cold pavement, despite the odds.