The day after

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

It’s the day after the 33rd MassKara Festival, and I have finally located most of my working muscles – they’re all aching now, a low-grade, delicious sort of pain akin to what one feels after a prolonged exercise, one that usually follows after doing something prolonged and productive.

I have just come from the public plaza, where the last of the bamboo poles that stood as kiosks for 22 days were being dismantled, and loaded in trucks. On one side, a choreographer was busy taking apart the sets they had used in the arena competitions and he was laying them aside carefully, I am sure, for some recycling.

Over at the carnival site, the rides are being taken down, and the tables and galleries are being set aside, I am sure, for the next fiesta hereabouts – I reckon they must be on their way to the Cinco de Noviembre festivities in Bago City.

Lacson Street is back to normal – well, almost, except for the buntings that continue to be there, keeping some of the festive mood in the strip, and I guess, that is just as well, as the city is also now hosting the University Games.

So, where did it all go, those 22 days of the festival? They are now memories, still clear when summoned in the mind, but mere memories nevertheless: the systematic rise of barricades and hanging of the buntings over the roads around the plaza, carving out the space we had called “festival site” for 22 days; the palpitating minutes before the festival opened, the rise of the music stations in the plaza, the rain-drenched pavement where we did the talent competitions, the disco lights hitting the makeshift structures, the heavy, thud-thud-thud of sound systems, the crash and burn of strings and winds and vocals of the bands.

They are mere memories, but what feelings they bring back in the remembering: the cool breeze of the monsoon striking fears of rains in our hearts as drumbeaters broke through the air, and the Mardi Gras characters walked, danced, sashayed and marched through the grill smoke and beer crowds; the reassuring green and blue-grey of our police forces keeping the peace at the plaza strained by a dramatic rise in foot traffic; the sudden mushrooming of all sorts of vendors selling all sorts of things, from corn grits to peanuts, from miniature masks designed as bracelets and necklaces to wow, did you see Sto. Niño clothes in shimmering reds, golds and greens – I guess these are leftover souvenir items from the last Sinulog.

Interestingly, there were also masks that were obviously atis in their previous lives, reincarnated as MassKara pieces with the addition of a feather or two for headdress. There were also balloons galore: inflatable dolphins and mermaids and animals as well as the colorful orbs that balloons originally are.

As usual, it was a time to experience the best and worst of people.

Were you have people going out of their way to help, there were also those who went out of their way to cash in on opportunities, even if it meant endangering public good and even public safety.

How disappointing and depressing, of course, to realize how some people could be so blinded by their selfish ends, but that I have come to accept, as part of the game; sad, but it is usually balanced out by the many acts of selflessness and generosity, big and small, that many other Bacoleños do for their city every time this festival comes around.

To both kinds, I guess, I will have to say thank you for making my own MassKara experience such a fulfilling journey of discovery about the nature of human nature.*

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