The Pasig River is a flowing bed of memories. Rivers are known to be carvers of culture and prosperity and the Pasig has been a benevolent entity to countless generations of Filipinos; as the term Tagalog means Taga-Ilog (Tagalog), which was a term for the Europ eans for people living in the Philippines. Even our national hero Jose Rizal couldn’t help but wax poetic about its beauty in this excerpt from his poem By the Banks of The Pasig River:
Come, come, come oh my heaven,
There by the river
My dulcet desire
I’ll sing to you,
To the soft murmur
Of the riverflow
Your very beautiful brow
With sampaguitas
I will adorn.
But look at what we’ve done. The period after the Second World War saw us dumping our anguish and hopes (for modernity) into the river. She suffered and suffocated under our metric tons of waste and signifiers of progress. It got to a point that that she was pronounced “biologically dead” in the 1990s. And contemplating on mortality is such a distressing act.
But hope springs eternal for the Pasig River. Headed by the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission, its vision is to make the Pasig River—clean and alive—reflecting the country’s noble history and progress. And what an ideal vision it is, water being the perfect conduit for ourselves, a mirror that reflects back our image in our own likeness and that includes what we have been doing to Mother Nature. Those who make up the Board of Commissioners include various members, public and private alike. This is a healthy sign that shows that despite the various activities that these sectors are involved in, they are focused and the circles in the Venn Diagram are brightly overlapping with the words revival for the Pasig River.
And we are all involved here, it is our job, and we should go beyond it. The Pasig River is our mirror and we are looking at it while holding the fragments in our hands.
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