The Jupiter Effect

If you have the chance, read The Jupiter Effect by Katrina Tuvera.

For me, it’s fiction and yet it’s not, because everything in the story happens against the backdrop of events that profoundly shaped my, and most of my friends’ generation - Martial Law.

I remember my dad talking about his memories during the Japanese occupation when he was maybe 8 or 9 years old. Stories like how they didn’t know any better when they threw stones at trucks carrying captured Japanese soldiers at the end of the war. Or about how, during the occupation, his dad (my grandfather) would pound eggshells and mix it into their rice to give them more protein.

I don’t know how true it was that times were really that bad that eggshells had to be pounded and mixed into rice, or that doing so actually gave them more protein – but it didn’t really matter. It was a nice story that was just that. It wasn’t real enough for me and I couldn’t relate.

So now, when I now tell my kids about how, back in our days in the university, their mother and I once stood with hundreds of thousands of Filipinos in front of tanks to oust a dictator, or that we once marched from UP Diliman to Luneta, or that once upon a time it took less than 30 minutes to get from Makati to Quezon City, would they treat my stories the same way?

If we are defined in part by what we go through, what does that say about us as a people when most Filipinos probably can’t really relate to events that each of us may see as monumentally important? Some events, after all, simply have to be lived through to be truly real.