The wrong is sometimes right

It is the work of Someone Up There that changes on earth take a turn for the better. And there are those who swear that this is so. Among them are those who have served sentence for whatever reason. There is a great change in their behavior and we have proof of that from people we know and even those close to us.

There is the popular Robin Padilla, jailed for carrying several unlicensed guns in his car. Robin served his term in prison, still wondering what hit him and adopting a new religion. And of course, there is Ronnel Wolfe, brother of Richard Merk whose mom Annie Brazil was interviewed recently by this section's editor Ricky Lo. Ronnel has been in prison for three years now on matters related to drugs.  

There are many such stories of people imprisoned for the wrong or right reasons. The jail personnel are the only ones close to them, aware of their problems, the most painful of which is boredom. Prisons insist their jailbirds go to church where the sermons are addressed directly to them.

Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center’s world-famous Dancing Inmates

Boredom is also what led the personnel of a Cebu province jail to bring dance and music to the daily exercises of the inmates, then posted videos of them online under the title of Dancing Inmates that got aired around the world.

What inspired us to come to the defense of these mentioned inmates is a book written by Luis Taruc and titled Apocalypse while serving time in prison. To those unfamiliar with Taruc, he is that brilliant Communist Party leader on trial for life in prison. “I waited a long time, wasting idle years of prison life, before I finally sat down to write this book,” Taruc told Nick Joaquin, another brilliant writer who helped in the publication of the book in 1977. When asked by Joaquin why he finally wrote the book, Taruc took a deep breath and replied, “I also want to make clear that Communists are human beings and that Communism is for many an attractive ‘ideal’… It is time to discard self-defeating hatred and bitterness.”

After 12 years in prison, Taruc surrendered and returned to the church stating that “he didn’t return because he had never left” which ended this discourse. The latest on the grapevine is that the book Apocalypse is being adapted into a series for all to watch and listen to.

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