Does it really matter that for the Japanese typhoon is a mere strong wind? Or that our word for typhoon comes from Japanese language?
For a long time, we had been naming typhoons after women, with the sexist notion that storms were like women's mind that changed and shifted direction every now and then. The unpredictability of the storm led policy-makers to then call storms after women's name.
Our memory of storms became then a procession of women whose respective names sounded like they were coming from the gilded age of the pre-war and post-war Philippines. Elang, Reming, Sening, Ibyang, Oling. One can almost imagine them: Long-haired, their stout or thin necks guarded by panuelo, and around them a baroque display of flowers and vines.
A few years ago, there was a poll aimed at coming up with a cycle-set of names. The new listing of names partially removed the stigma about women and their so-called fickle-mindedness. A policy came with this listing: When a typhoon or storm has wrought so much destruction, the name given to that storm will be struck from the list. It is a kind of exorcism of nature.
Interestingly enough, whenever there's a strong typhoon, we think of it as the wrath of God. The great flood that came upon Metro Manila, for example, is now described as "Bangis ni Ondoy" (the Fury of Ondoy) and the "Hagupit" ni Ondoy" (the Lash of Ondoy). We blame Nature and quickly take back our words because we feel Nature has really been good.
The truth is we should be changing this discourse and start talking about how we have been cruel to Nature. That cruelty is our way of dating ourselves, or our generation not so much in the construction of our material surroundings but in its destruction.
I often wondered when I was a child what Bagyong Ugis meant? This typhoon was supposed to be a strong one. My memory of strong typhoons was that of Sening and Yoling. With those two typhoons was my memory of a weather forecasting office that could really never forecast then. And now.
Sening came one day when people thought it was a sunny day that turned overcast. There was no announcement then, or if there was, it was about a storm that changed its course, or that it was not that strong, and that it would not hit the city. Another version that came of that day was that the typhoon has veered its course and was somewhere already.
Two aunts went to Centro in the guise of going to the market; they actually went to watch a movie. Cocooned in the moviehouse, and lost in the sound of the film, the two did not sense what was happening outside. Outside our house owned by the Hidalgos, our neighbors were busy hanging clothes to dry. The day before was a rainy day. At Ateneo Avenue, that area fronting the school was a sweep of cogon grasses. The place was so dense in those days that we dreamed of catching big birds in there, like some owls brave enough to nest in the shade of the tall grasses. Years back, policemen had to send in big carabaos into that grassy mall in order to smoke away a fugitive from Tinangis Penal Farm.
By eleven, living was not easy in the city anymore. The wind was picking up strength almost every minute. Soon, the two aunts were banging at the door downstairs now kept tight by the wind blowing it shut. They waited for several hours before the lull in the wind (actually a calm in the eye of the storm) could allow them to open the door.
At about 6 in the evening, the wind was howling so hard the walls of the house were like accordion being pulled and pushed. It was about seven when my father decided to open the wall leading to the ground floor, occupied by the Tadurans then. We had no way to tell them what we were planning to do. My father just thought if they saw the part of the saw going in and out of their wall, we were not planning to redesign their home. A square window-like opening was cut out and we soon started to move onto their sala. Down there, we waited for the wind to just take our home (the second-floor) away into the darkening universe, and with it our worries.
The day after the storm, Naga had no electricity. Not for days but for months. Each morning, when we went to school, we made sure we cleaned our noses. The soot from the gas lamps were the culprit for our blackened nostrils.
I do not remember the terror anymore. I do not even recall if we blamed Nature or if we took responsibility for the storm. I just remember my father, strong-willed and wildly creative in his desire to save us all.
In the meantime, the weather bureau cannot forecast storms properly. And the government still cannot help us with anything. We still need to rely on fathers who are strong and have the sense of humor while trying to save us all from the storm that dates us all.