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AS I started to write this coolumn I was tempted to just rewrite the column I wrote on this same
month last year about the Leyte tragedy where living people were buried and died because of landslides. In that column, I
asked Pinoy Balita readers with the question, "for whom the bells toll?" I was then referring to
several towns where churches tolled their bells everytime a corpse was brought in for blessing. I answered the question with,
"They toll for you!"
Almost after a year, like the horses of Apocalypse, four successive typhoons brought a much bigger
tragedy devastating parts of Luzon, causing widespread landslides and turning it into a sea of brown water. Images shown on
television and newspapers show the vast destruction of lands, infrastructure, and dwellings as well as faces of people in
whose eyes we see desolation and deep despair. More touching are sights of nature-made cemeteries where people were buried
and killed by the sudden descent of landslides over them. Again the bells are tolling, this time louder and much more frequent.
And again they toll not for the dead because they can no longer hear but for all of us whose lives are diminished by the sudden
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