KUWENTONG KUTSERO: Ganito Kami Noon • Newly arrived in Manila after a seven-year sojourn in Europe, Crisostomo Ibarra, the protagonist of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, hires a carriage to bring him to San Diego (a stand-in for Calamba, Rizal’s hometown). The ride allows him to reacquaint himself with familiar sights, amidst the throng “of so many coaches trying to escape,” some of them “drawn by magnificent teams of Shetland ponies.” He recognizes Padre Damaso, ensconced in an “elegant Victoria.” Coming from Binondo, his coach passes by the Escolta, and crosses the Pasig River via the Puente de España. On the other side are sights that awaken memories of his years spent in city: the botanical gardens, Calle Arroceros, Tabacalera, and the hoary ramparts of Intramuros: “Ibarra looked away, to the right, and there saw Old Manila, surrounded still by walls and moats, like an anemic young girl wrapped in a dress left over from her grandmother’s salad days.”* In Nick Joaquin’s masterpiece of a short story “Summer Solstice,” set in 1851 Manila, the upper-class family of Doña Lupeng and Don Paeng and their young sons are driven through the arrabal of Paco in their own carriage and by their own coachman to a grandfather’s home, for lunch. It is the longest day of the year, and the feast day of St. John the Baptist, celebrated to this day in San Juan, when passersby are doused with water. Their open-air carriage is capacious enough for the family of four and permits the lovely young wife to stand and survey the religious procession: “‘Oh, look, boys—here comes the St. John!’ cried Doña Lupeng, and she sprang up in the swaying carriage, propping one hand on her husband’s shoulder while with the other she held up her silk parasol.” These carriages, or carruajes de primer clase, were for the elite and are long gone. Not for them the humble kalesa (from the Czech kolesa, a light, one- or two-wheeled open carriage) or karetela, the jeepney of its day, patronized by the common tao. (Interestingly, Leonardo Sarao, founder of Sarao Motors, the famous jeepney manufacturer, was once upon a time a kalesa driver or kutsero, which explains why Sarao jeepneys often have a m https://www.instagram.com/p/BujJSnYBKH3/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=nrq7jl0azv12
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