Letter from Manila ( Philippines) 1981

Shanty town of Manila




My reason for flying to Philippines was to visit an old pen friend, I never met but  I had been writing to her since I was fifteen years of age. I arranged to be in Philippines for a month.

 Having decided not to hang myself from the 6th floor window in Hong Kong hotel, ((yes there were times when depression took over my travelling dreams, hanging from the hotel window seemed the only option out of this lonely planet of mine) I caught my flight to Manila on 5^th November 1981. I arrived at Manila airport and before spending more time hanging around looking for my pen friend as arranged; I decided to catch a taxi to her home. Yes, the taxi drivers all over the world are the same, they will take a longer route to get you where you want to be and waste all your time telling you about their beautiful land. I discovered that there are 7000 Islands where 98% of the population are Christians mainly Catholics. The fairer race on the Islands come from China  and own most of the wealth where as the beautiful tanned race, the indigenous people of the Islands do all manual jobs and are poor. Lucky for me my pen friend forefathers came from China.  

 As soon as I arrived at my friend’s place, I had to wait an hour outside her house for her arrival from the airport where she had been looking out for me. On her arrival I was given few safety rules to digest and one of the rules was not to catch a taxi alone in Manila!!

 I found that my friend could not cook or clean and lived in a cramped room for one person with a beautiful tanned Pilipino maid who looked after her needs. So where was I to sleep and eat in her tiny room which was surrounded by more cramped rooms of families and lots of screaming children? It seemed like I have landed in a shanty town of Manila, I reassured myself that this was no different from my life in Delhi; I shall survive, but for how long?

 

 All the women I met were Pilipino beauties, tanned, with tiny, slim figures and most were hanging around with seven feet tall American guys in the hope they will take them away from the misery of everyday life in the city. My friend had an American boy friend too and she left me in her so called apartment with the maid every evening and went off to stay the nights with her American boy friend. During day time we spent hours seeing the highlights of Manila, the posh hotels with beautiful girls with men at their sides and we ate out in cheap places where we were served food on a banana skin.  We visited all the American style shopping Malls where the girls in the make up department store thought I had a very beautiful pointed nose and big eyes and would I like to be made up? Yes, came my reply; though I looked like a clown, the process of being made up into a beauty, helped me to kill my time in this very Americanised city where boredom started to creep into my life.

 Fortunately, within few days of my stay in Manila, my friend had arranged for me to stay with one of her relatives in the city of Cebu and it did not take long for me to get myself sorted out for this exciting journey which I was ill prepared for?