The World in a Train

One Sunday I entrained for Baliwag, a town in Bulacan which can well fall in to h doddering two fiestas a year without a qualm.I took the train partly because I am prejudiced in favor of the government-owned railroad, partly because I am allowed comparative comfort in a coach, and finally because trains sometimes leave and arrive according to schedule.In the coach I found a little world, a section of the abstraction called humanity whom we be supposed to love and live for. I had previously arranged to divide the idle hour or so between cultivating my neglected Christianity and smoothing out the rough edges of my nature with the aid of grateful sights without the rolling wheels, the flying huts and trees and light-green palay seedlings and carabaos along the way.Inertia, I suppose, and the sort of reality we moderns subsist make falling in love with my immediate neighbors often a matter of severe strain and effort to me.Let me give a sketchy evidence of the little world whose com pany Mang Kiko sh ard in moments which soon passed away affecting most of us.First, there came to my notice three husky individuals who dusted their seats furiously with their handkerchiefs without regard to hygiene or the br separatehood of men. It gave me no little annoyance that on such a quiet morning the unpleasant aspects in other peoples ways should claim my attention.Then there was a harmless-looking middle-aged man in green camisa de chino with rolled sleeves who must have entered asleep. When I noticed him he was already snugly entrenched in a corner seat, with his slippered feet comfortably planted on the opposite seat, all the while his head danced anddangled with the motion of the train. I could not, for the love of me, imagine how he would look if he were awake.A child of six in the next seat must have shared with me in speculating more or less the dreams of this sleeping man in green. Was he dreaming of the Second World War or the price of eggs? Had he any worries r ound the unchangeable dominion status or the final outcome of the struggles of the masses, or was it merely the arrangement of the scales on a fighting roasters legs that brought that frown on his face? just now the party that most engaged my attention was a family of eight composed of a short but efficient begetter, four very young children, mother, grandmother, and some other woman who must have been the efficient fathers sister. They distributed themselves on four benches you know the kind of seats facing each other so that half the passengers voyage thornward. The more I looked at the short but young and efficient father the shorter his parts looked to me. His movements were fast and short, too. He removed his coat, folded it carefully and slung it on the back of his seat. Then he pulled out his wallet from the hip pocket and counted his money while his wife and the rest of his group watched the ritual without a word.Then the short, young, and efficient father stood up and pulled out two banana leaf bundles from a bamboo basket and spread out both bundles on one bench and log dejeuner was ready at ten oclock. With the efficient father leading the charge, the children (except the baby in his grandmothers arms) began to dig away with little encouragement and aid from the elders. In a short while the skirmish was over, the enemy shrimps, omelet, rice and tomato sauce were routed out, save for a few shrimps and some rice left for the grandmother to care in her own style later.Then came the water-fetching ritual. The father, with a glass in hand, led the march to the train faucet, followed by three children whose faces still showed the marks of a hard-fought-battle. In passing between me and a person, then engaged in a casual conversation with me, the short but efficient father made a courteous gesture which is still good to see inthese democratic days he bent from the hips and, dropping both hands, made an opening in the air between my collocutor and me a gesture which in unspoiled places means Excuse Me.In one of the stations where the train stopped, a bent old woman in black boarded the train. As it moved away, the old woman went about the coach, begging holding every prospective Samaritan by the arm, and stretching onward her gnarled hand in the familiar fashion so distasteful to me at that time. There is something in begging which destroys some fiber in most men. Every time you drop a penny into a beggars palm you help degrade a man and make it more difficult for him to rescind with dignity. . .There was something in his beggars eye which seemed to demand. Now do your duty. And I did. Willy-nilly I dropped a coin and thereby filled my life with repulsion. Is this Christianity? Blessed are the poor. But with what speed did that bent old woman cross the platform into the next coachWhile thus engaged in unwholesome thought, I felt myself jerked as the train made a curve to the right. The toddler of the family of eight lost his balance and caught the short but efficient father off-guard. In an instant all his efficiency was employed in collecting the shrieking toddler from under his seat. The child had, in no time, developed two extensive bumps on the head, upon which was applied a moist piece of cloth. There were no reproaches, no words spoken. The discipline in the family was remarkable, or was it because they considered the head as a minor anatomical appendage and was therefore nor worth the fuss?Occasionally, when the childs crying rose above the din of the locomotive and the clinkety-clank of the wheels on the rails, the father would jog about a bit without blushing, look at the bumps on his childs head, shake his own, and move his lips saying, Tsk, Tsk. And nothing more.Fairly tired of assuming the minor responsibilities of my neighbors in this little world in motion, I looked into the distant horizon where the blue Cordilleras merged into the blue of the sky. There I rested my thoughtsupon the billowing silver and grey of the clouds, lightly remarking upon their being a trial to us, although they may not know it. We each would mind our own business and suffer in silence for the littlest mistakes of others laughing at their ways if we happened to be in a position to suspend our emotion and view the whole scene as a god would or, we could weep for other men if we are the mood to shed copious tears over the whole tragic aspect of a world thrown out of joint.It is strange how human kind-heartedness operates. We assume an attitude of complete indifference to utter strangers whom we have seen but not met. We claim that they are the hardest to fall in love with in the prevalent exercise of Christian charity. Then a little child falls from a seat, or a beggar stretches forth a gnarled hand, or three husky men dust their seats and we are, despite our pretensions, affected. Why not? If even a sleeping man who does nothing touches our life