'Most of us become children again when we enter the slums of Asia,' says Billy Kwan, the dwarf in the movie The Year of Living Dangerously.
Well I say fuck to that. And I'm being really polite just now.
When a dog wants to bite your balls off, or a beggar follows you down the road, there's a primal fear to find the busiest road and try to blend in.
There are some dwarfs outside my local mini-mart. One of them is really polite. I dug deep in my pockets and handed them a few coins. One is very ancient, limps and uses crutches when he's too lazy to crawl. The other one is younger and limps.
They both sleep outside the mini-mart on cardboard boxes with other family members.
The Philipinos are very charitable and it's a given the poor will hang outside the mini-marts. These midgets even open up the door for the customers.
They are no different to the parking guys in Indonesia who collect a fee from motorbikes and cars who park outside a mini-mart or those music men who busk in the cafes, they are aggressive beggars who play off tune only looking for cash for their next drug fix.
But at least here in Manila, you have the option of saying no.
There was something peculiar about her. Hobbits or pygmies came to mind. There was a worldliness to her beyond her young years. I just couldn't figure it out at the time.
The 'little' person kept soaring and gliding all over the place, darting almost between my legs.
With the Manila Cathedral in the background, I thought she was a little cherub. For a moment she was as she continued soaring the skies of her mind making cooing and vrooming sounds.
This was like a freak show on legs. That's the feeling I had. Was it a case of Manila overwhelming the senses again?
I couldn't figure it out.
Until now.
She was a dwarf child. And she was putting on a performance for coins.
And I suppose I should have dropped a few coins in her hand. I'm gonna be digging deeper in my pockets.
The slums are a loose term in Manila. If more than fifty percent of the population live out of boxes and sleep on carboards, then technically, the majority of Manila is a slum.
There's always talk of India being the mecca of slums. I'd beg to differ.
At least here there's no romanticising the slums.
Hollywood's aggrandisement of the term is conspicuously absent.
What you see is what you get, people trying to get by.
There's no looking down on them here. It's just a sad fact of life and if you can accommodate that thought, it puts a bit of dignity back into the lives of those more unfortunate than us.
Living off the streets is an art form here.
A few spare coins goes a long way in restoring some faith.
'Thanks again,' says the younger midget, who hands the older one the coin I gave him. It's only fair that each of them gets a coin. How's that for equality on the streets?
Nothing harsh about it.
Dwarves are people, just like you and me, but only smaller.
Which reminds me of the dwarf I saw bringing in the harvest on a rice terrace in Bali. You could hardly see him over the golden brown rice stalks.
