bookREview: Para Kay B and What We Should Know about Love

Love is a concept that is rather cliched by time due to the infinite number of irrepressible plundering of people who know no other topic to explore about. It's normally an innocent concept blamed by humanity for living a miserable life leaving them with nothing to scribble but this all-time-favorite and ironically ill-justified matter. Until Ricky Lee proposes a rather disturbing theory about love in his first attempt to write a novel: Para Kay B: O Kung Papano Dinevastate ng Pag-Ibig ang 4 out of 5 sa Atin (roughly translated as: For B: Or How Love Devastated 4 out 5 of Us).

"May quota ang pag-ibig. Sa bawat limang umiibig ay isa lang ang magiging maligaya."

What we know about love is that it is something that can bring heaven into what seems to be a hellish life, while sometimes it is what brings someone into the deepest, darkest and unknown-of pits of hell. What we may not know is the possible statistics of such cases. But Ricky Lee promotes a theory that love has a quota - that for every five person who is in love, only one will remain happy in the end.

Para Kay B is a story of five women who were caught by the spell of love and who, in the end of each chapter, are seen to have been left alone to brood over their loss in the battle with love. Irene, Sandra, Ericka, Ester and Bessie are faces of typical women who just hoped to love and be loved in return. Irene lived her life clinging into the promise of marriage Jordan made when they were young. Sandra's case is an evidence of love having no boundaries as she fell in love with her brother Lupe who is banished by his father for committing an "immoral" act. Ester's story focused on lesbian affair with her kasambahay Sara while being married with a loving husband who met an unfortunate plight abroad. Ericka is a woman who never felt love until the time Jake was reduced to being incapable of thinking rightly. Finally, Bessie boasts love is not true for she has had several relationships with men and she never felt anything for them until Lucas came into her life.

Left with somehow tragic ending for the women and their lovers, the readers are introduced in the succeeding chapter to the notion that it is the writer - Lucas - who has control over the lives of the characters. While thinking over how he would end his stories one night, he was disturbed by the five main characters demanding for a happy ending. He conceded and eventually gave them what they like except for Sandra who settled on the ending in her chapter. Similarly, Bessie and Lucas' story is also left open-ended as the supposed real Bessie is now with Brigs, a character who inflicted Lucas physical pain. Nevertheless, the manuscript the writer Lucas gave to Bessie give the reader a sense of light on the love between Bessie and Lucas.

Ricky Lee artfully crafted the novel without taking into account literary and moralistic conventions creating impact on the curious reader. Lines are blatant yet truthful, and scenes capture what seem to be an obscured reality in the present society.

A story within a story, Para Kay B is an example of an emerging classic, having a high possibility of becoming an exponent of paradigm shift in mainstream conservative Filipino writing.

iThink: Peace Thoughts

There are six billion of us who right now are roaming around the Earth – six billion people wrecking havoc at places and leaving a nasty imprint at every soil they step on. We are uncontrollable, undaunted by the threat of humanity’s end which springs from our selfishness and greed for wealth and power.

Yes, I said that right. Each one of us in certain ways contribute to building the wall that keep us farther away from attaining genuine peace on Earth. Even the self-confessed advocates of peace may unconsciously give their own share in the rising wall. Try to answer these honestly: How many times have you failed to simply flash a “true” smile to another person whom you come across with on your way to work just because you are busy thinking about how you can accomplish a task successfully to earn a promotion?; How many times did you forgive other persons’ misgivings even though they are consistently making your life miserable day after day?; How many times have you reflected about whether you hurt someone with your words and actions and planned to accept your fault and sincerely apologize for it in the earliest possible time?; When have you thanked God for giving you another day on Earth, not because you need it but because you can complete other persons’ existence through it?

John Donne once said, “No man is an island entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the whole…” We exist all because somebody else exists. A person’s destiny is determined by another person’s choices and decisions in life. If that is so, why do we need to fight over an issue only to find out later that we can solve it at an open and peaceful dialogue? Why should powerful countries launch wars and engage in more bloodshed with other countries to attain the most-coveted peaceful living? It is said that a mistake, no matter how simple or complicated, no matter how big or small can and will never be solved by another mistake.

We are dubbed as the highest form of being on Earth for we are endowed with wisdom – wisdom that allows us to discriminate those which is right and which is wrong, those which can hurt or which can elevate morale and those which can help a person realize his potentials or can destroy his hope for success. But why does it seem like we haven’t perfected those gifts yet despite all the generations that passed before us? There are so many questions yet only a few have answers.

In consideration of all of these, I envision a world where people respect one another. One, where the populace is sensitive about each other’s feelings and not one where everyone tries to reach the pinnacle at the cost of stepping down at somebody else. I am dreaming of a world where we, the people realize the importance of other person’s existence for without them our existence wouldn’t also be possible. I yearn for a society where people are honest with what they think and feel because by honesty, all other good things will come.

Respect. Sensitivity. Honesty. These are three simple words that are vital to achieving genuine peace on Earth. It may be impossible to force other people to practice these three but if we start it with ourselves, since we are in some ways interconnected with one another, the chance of achieving that most sought-after prize will be a 100% possibility in the future.

However, I must admit that my voice, energy and resources in promoting this advocacy are incomparable with those of big organizations dedicated to promoting peace but I know that as a simple teacher, my words will live on in the hearts and minds of my students even after my life here on Earth ends. My hopes are high that one of them will someday become a catalyst of the genuine and lasting peace that the past generation started to envision since time immemorial and that we of today’s generation are still painstakingly seeking for.