Personal

Boy in the Bus

Kinda surreal thing happened to me this morning. As I go about my usual ‘power nap’ ritual while commuting on an aircon bus going to the office, I got a bit startled to see a boy beside me. No. This is not your everyday commuter: alone and no elder person to accompany him, dirty, barefoot, frail as a scarecrow, diminutive, sad and lost.

My first reaction as I woke up was like, “The fuck they’re letting slumdogs inside buses pickpocketting people while unguarded!” But then I started asking him where he came from. He said he came from Cubao, but he originally lived in Guadalupe. “Why so?” I asked further. With a trembling voice pleading for some food or change to buy bread to let his hunger subside for a moment, he was a vagabond in Cubao for two days now looking for food to eat. He rode on a jeepney coming from Guadalupe only to reach Cubao to look for some bread, he said. “And what about your parents, aren’t they feeding you?” He answered me with a blank look. “But why are you in the bus now? You want to go home already?” His hesitant nod is good enough for me to hand him over a pack of biscuits I had plus some money so he could reach his destination and buy some food.

We were supposed to talk some more but our bus was already at my stop. Then I left the kid—now somewhat wearing a grin of satisfaction—to “better use that money for food instead of solvent and get home ASAP. Or else, you may never get another chance of surviving again.”

Nice dose for my day’s reality.

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