The package not delivered took the route not taken
Clicking on the stylized graphic above, which was designed by Amado Bajarias, will bring you to the second issue of the Maginhawa Street Journal where the piece below was first published.
Granta magazines are my weakness.
Next to peace of mind, good government, and my share of the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) funds (which I didn't receive), Granta magazines are the only thing I want more of in this life.
For the past 18 years I have managed to amass 110 issues including a special edition about our country (Granta 18: The Snap Revolution | James Fenton in the Philippines) and what appear to be the US and UK editions of Granta 25: Murder. Their difference? One carries a piece not found in the other: Rian Malan's Murderer in the Family.
How did I happen to come by that discrepancy?
There was a point in my life when I bought every Granta issue that I saw regardless of whether I already had a copy of it or not and I happened to have stumbled upon a lot.
I then gave away the one that was in a poorer physical condition, unless it was bought elsewhere or was a gift from someone else.
In short, I closely examined every Granta issue Igot which explained how I decided to keep two issues of Murder.
A week before last year's lockdown, I got talked into attending a small, private photoshoot of plants in an old house.
I got more than a free lunch out of it.
At the front yard was an abandoned desk in the drawer of which, upon closer examination, contained not one, but two old Granta issues (Granta 25 and Granta 34: Death of a Harvard Man).
Who would have thought, etc., etc., and all that, right?
Here was good, old luck in all its plain glory and I was its unwitting and perhaps even unworthy recipient. (Take that, SAP funds.)
I went up to the person in charge of the old house and asked him right off: Could I buy these books?
"Keep them all," he said — the best three words in the English language that I have ever heard in my life so far that wasn't "Social Amelioration Program."
Immediately, I posted my discovery on social media.
An attractive acquaintance then sent me a direct message, asking me whether she could have them.
Of course, I replied.
Who was I to refuse a chance to show off my good taste and, for that matter, my generosity (especially since I already have copies of both)?
I arranged to have her pick it up at a branch of a courier service nearest her office.
We all know what happened next.
The lockdown took effect, prompting the closure of that branch for months. The package of books I sent got rerouted and delivered to another outlet where she could pick it up.
But she wasn't able to do so. At that time, she was trapped outside Manila and was hesitant about coming back so soon.
Thanks to the confusion over community quarantine classifications — enhanced, modified, iodized, or fortified with Vitamin C — the books lay unclaimed for months.
When I followed it up, a representative of the courier service told me on the phone it was already destroyed. It was company policy for abandoned goods, she explained.
I then hung up, left with the impression that that package not delivered was — and this might be a stretch — collateral damage in the government's tepid, disorganized coronavirus response.
But then again, that's another story, probably best told over a few rounds of beer, which I'm going to buy, once I get my share of SAP funds.
