Pliant Like a Bamboo

IV Mallari

There is a story in Philippine folklore about a mango tree and a bamboo tree. Not being able to agree as to which the stronger of the two was, they called upon the wind to make the decision.

The wind blew it hardest. The mango tree stood fast. It would not yield. It knew it was strong and sturdy. It would not sway. It was too proud. It was too sure of it. But finally its roots gave way, and it tumbled down.

The bamboo tree was wiser. It knew it was not as robust as the mango tree. And so every time the wind blew, it bent its head gracefully. It made loud protests, but it let the winds have their way. When finally the wind got tired of blowing, the bamboo tree still stood in all its beauty and grace.

Filipinos are like bamboos. They know that they are not strong enough to withstand the onslaughts of superior forces, so they yield. They bend their heads gracefully with many loud protests.

They have survived. The Spaniards came and dominated them for more than three hundred years. When the Spaniards left, the Filipinos still stood-only much richer in experience and culture.

The Americans took the place of the Spaniards. They used more subtle means of winning over the Filipinos who embraced the American way of life more readily than the Spaniards' vague promise of the hereafter.

Then the Japanese came like a storm, like a plague of locusts, like a pestilence rude, relentless and cruel. The Filipinos learned to bow their heads low to "cooperate" with the Japanese in their "holy mission of establishing the Co-Prosperity Sphere." The Filipinos had only hate and contempt for the Japanese, but they learned to smile sweetly at them and to thank them graciously for their "benevolence and magnanimity."

Now that the Americans have come back and driven away the Japanese, those Filipinos who profited most from cooperating with the Japanese have been loudest in their protestations of innocence. Everything is as if the Japanese had never been in the Philippines.

For the Filipinos will welcome any kind of life that the gods offer them; that is why they are contented, happy and at peace. The sad plight of other people of the world is not theirs. To them, as to that ancient Oriental poet, the past is already a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision, but today, well-lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow, a vision of hope. In like manner, the Filipino regards vicissitudes of fortune as the bamboo tree regards the angry blasts of the blustering wind.

The Filipinos are eminently suited to their romantic role. They are slender and wiry. They are nimble and graceful in their movements. Their voices are soft and have the gift of languages. In what other place in the world can you find people who can carry on a fluent conversation in at least three languages?

This gift is another means by which the Filipinos have managed to survive. There is no insurmountable barrier between them and any of the people who have come to live with them - Spanish, Americans, Japanese. The foreigners do not have to learn their language. They easily manage to master theirs.

Verily, the Filipinos are like the bamboo tree. In their grace and ability to adjust to the peculiar and inexplicable whims of fate, the bamboo tree is their expressive and symbolic national tree. It will have to be, not the molave nor the narra, but the bamboo.









16. Verbs for compound subjects that are joined by the conjunction “and” should be plural.

17. Verbs for compound subjects joined by correlative conjunctions such as “either-or” agree with the nearer subject.

18. When the subject is an indefinite pronoun that is always singular, the verb must be singular.