Grace and Integrity Amidst Cataclysm

Grace and Integrity Amidst Cataclysm

Briefly, the camera of a foreign news crew settles on a slightly muddied vending machine, its glass panel intact, the potato chips behind it still neatly stacked. All around it were cars, twisted and resting in odd and sometimes surreal angles, heaps of wood that were once doors, floors, and walls of homes, and puddles of seawater left behind by the tsunami’s retreat to the sea. It was a resting place for material possessions, and, given the enormity of the tragedy, even for their human owners.

The world has seen the thousands of anguished faces, the dead laid in rows, the shallow lakes of seawater that have settled on streets and farms, and the mountains of debris. These apocalyptic images are too common in places where Nature reminds man of its power or man inflicts utmost cruelty to his brethren. It was the orderly lines of Japanese, people recently rendered homeless and even orphaned and widowed by the 8.9 tremor, queuing in almost straight lines, waiting to be attended to, that have struck many. In another place, the world will be watching medieval scenes of fighting over what can pass for food and shelter under circumstances where one can rightly envy the dead.

Now, we can add that image of the vendo, its wares unmolested despite the great want for food and money, to the collage of images that will be the human face of the March 11 earthquake. Many have long looked up at the Japanese for their passion for work. Now, more will admire them for not abandoning grace and integrity when they cannot be blamed for clawing and elbowing their way to get the first packets of food and plucking what can still be sold from their dead neighbor’s house.


- Prospero Pulma Jr. -