Of authors and sensibilities: Dan Brown's Inferno Burns Manila

The newly released novel by author Dan Brown casts Manila in a not so flattering light. In this regard, MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino actually wrote a letter to Dan Brown objecting to his portrayal of Manila as a sleazy, crime invested, poverty ridden place.

In a report filed by Rouchelle Dinglasan of GMA News, Dan Brown casts Manila as a city with “six-hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution, and a horrifying sex trade, whose workers consisted primarily of young children, many of whom had been sold to pimps by parents who took solace in knowing that at least their children would be fed.”

As a Filipino, and I consider myself a Filipino nationalist and patriot, I cannot take offense to this caricature of Manila. Indeed, it's a wake up call to the realities that have essentially symbolized Manila, a typical third world megapolis. I cannot take offense to Brown's description of Manila because I actually agree with what he said. Brown's assessment of Manila is something everyone knows and experiences yet no one seems to do anything to remedy. What should be asked therefore is not whether Brown's assessment is fair - it is not for one, but whether we can do something about it and how.

I have personally never liked Manila, it's a place that symbolizes everything a city should not, a microcosm of the worst a city can be, a petridish of the country's failure to manage itself effectively and the hopes and dreams of the Filipino experience all wrapped in a smorgasbord of contradictions and inconsistencies but nevertheless pulsating with that ardor for life - however one defines life.

When I studied in Baguio, I naturally passed Manila, and everytime I am in Manila, I go to no place but the bus terminal only. I always edged to get out of Manila's suffocating air, literally and metaphorically. But Manila is Manila because it is the embodiment of the Filipino struggle to define itself and its destiny.

Most of what Brown said about Manila I could not agree more, but to say that it is practically synonymous with the gates of hell is to stretch the definition of hell, and for that matter, heaven. Even from a literary perspective, Manila would not encapsulate the Abrahamic tradition's definition of hell - maybe Mogadishu, Baghdad, or Pyongyang well fit the better vision Brown wants to convey regarding hell.

Then again, hell can be a palace, heaven can be the mundane regularity of a mountain village. Maybe for Brown's character Sienna Brooks, hell is the experience of urbanization, of which major cities of the world are unfortunately afflicted - which is by the way the very essence of cities, urbanized villages. Yes, even New York, Washington D.C. or Atlanta are not immune to sex trade or pollution or traffic jams. And speaking of traffic jams, none can beat Lagos, Nigeria or even Bangkok. For crime? Are you kidding, every 5 minutes someone dies through violence in New York. Juarez in Mexico is practically a modern "killing fields," Baghdad even until today is a veritable war zone, gang infested and terror defined.

The Filipino people should not be insulted with Brown's interpretation of Manila - to do so would be to give credence to a work of fiction. Remember, the novel is a work of words, played in the mind of the author, incarnated in the fabric of verbal play. But we cannot ignore the truths of the novel, for to be reactive to its incontestably scarring indictments of Manila would be to miss a chance to do something about the things that needs to be changed.

So fellow Filipinos, let's chill up. Who knows, the novel might actually breathe new life and light to Manila's decaying facade and usher in a renaissance of its once glorious past.