Weather experts say an average of 20 typhoons lash the Philippines each year. Each year, typhoons churn out stories of proactive leadership among local officials and of countless heroic acts by volunteer and regular rescuers. Each typhoon leaves stories of loss and survival at its wake.
One such story is that of Tani Ato whose relatives were among 200 villagers killed in the landslides wrought by typhoon “Pepeng” in the Province of Benguet in 2010. A decade has since passed, but for me his story still runs fresh each time a hurricane hits the country. Some details like names of places and people may vary, but the story remains the same. And so my musings about Tani Ato is the same for all those fellow Filipinos.
If Tani Ato were a celebrity, his tragic story would have merited a running news story in the national papers. But he is not, so his grief had to be immediately lost in the nation’s frenzy for the most explosive showbiz gossip or political scandal.
If he were a land developer, he would have already relocated his real estate ventures to certified landslide-free areas. But he is not, so he will have to stay put in his house by the river and presume that the next typhoon will simply get bored of its predecessor’s usual path of destruction and will seek fresher victims elsewhere.
If he were a writer, he would have told of how he metaphorically wrote 30 at 73, when the recent typhoon conspired with tons of earth to bury six of his kin at Twin Peaks, Tuba, Benguet. He would have graphically described how his tears raged as he frantically dug up his dead, how he washed them clean, and how he buried them in a row of tombs close to his house. And yes, as a poet and fictionist he would have produced volumes of creative work that could stamp his name on the CCP’s literary yearbook, Ani, or that could earn him a Palanca or a Man Asian Literary Prize. But he is not, so his reflections about his tragic encounters with Nature will have to be confined to small talks with his neighbors and all he can do now is to (re)tell the nosy in unadorned speech about how he lost Ambrosio, 49 ; Oliver, 27; Patricia, 30; Gloria, 27; Keithley, 4; and Jamaica, 9 months.
If he were a preacher, he would have waxed eloquent on theodicy and eschatology exhorting people that the disaster was the will of God, and that all he must do is to develop a deeper faith in the inscrutable wisdom of Divine Providence and to be forewarned of Armageddon and be assured of Heaven. But he is not, and he is still probably wondering why he had to bury his own children and grandchildren, and if in his remaining years on earth he will have to bury too his other surviving relatives, with none left to bury him.
If he were a guru, he would have found comfort in the truth that this world is an illusion and that by his suffering he has now come closer to fully understanding the Four Noble Truths of life and that his release from the Great Cycle may soon come at last. But he is not, so he will have to find comfort in the thought that in the next cycle of typhoon onslaughts, he could eyeball the eye of storm and remain unnerved.
If he were a philosopher, he would have developed a treatise on metaphysics that could intrigue generations of future readers in an intellectual journey from ‘‘Socrates to Sartre and Beyond.” But he is not, so he will remain inarticulate about his existential concerns, and although he may not be able to spell ‘‘S-E-N-E-C-A,” he will have to stoically bear his troubles.
If he were a psychologist, he would have applied his lectures on stress and coping to himself and probably come up with a new set of EQ tests. But he didn’t have to lecture me about disaster and survival, for I could see how, after being battered by a storm, he has striven to get on with his life: I could see it in the deep lines of his face, in the unpracticed way he pointed at the framed photos of his dead loved ones; I could hear it in his simple retelling of a nightmare that, from hereon, would haunt him during a downpour at night.
He is just one of thousands of Filipinos who will have to nurse wounds in their hearts for the rest of their lives. He is just one of those thousands of voiceless, faceless victims of calamities across the country whose harrowing struggles with the random changes in life must be shared with the rest of the world if only to make us more humble, compassionate, generous, just, thankful.