This Is Not A Eulogy

Johnny. Bro. This is not a eulogy. You're not gone. You've just been misplaced. Tempoarily lost. One day, years after you're found, we'll look back on this and laugh. This is not a goodbye.
I think about you a lot nowadays man. I have so many memories of you. More than most other people at Kodai 'cause I grew up with you too. I remember playing outside every evening. That destructive phase us guys all went through. How ardently we all tried to screw up my BMX Twister. We gave it away to some a few years ago by the way. It was in tip-top condition.
I remember applying to Kodai together and getting in together and experiencing our first night away from home together. I remember getting through the toughest times of boarding school together. We had our differences. We had our fights. I guess when you know someone too well, you tend to take them for granted a little. I have memories of fights and confrontations also. But, even they, Johnny, even they make me miss you more. It was all part of vibrant, motley package you were. Johnathan Marak.
I remember soccer in the rain. How we used to nickname you the 'One Man Army'. How you sent the defense scattering when you charged in. I remember Swedish House and all our dumbass exploits. I remember that old, abandoned house in the Swedish Compound. And camping out on the basketball court, making baked beans over the watchman's fire.
I remember our band. The one Shaggy called 12:01 because we were supposed to have a name by noon and we didn't so he just looked at the time on his watch and named us that. I remember playing No Woman No Cry with Neeraj on the drums. And practicing Innocent and Hero in the cage with that shitty drumset. I remember us getting banned for the Rock Concert because Kirtan threw the duster at the health teacher.
I remember digging that well for villagers at Bharatnagar. You and Aditi. Hehe. And ninth grade field trip! How Aditi and Mercy had to clean the whole room after we had finished. ; ) And how I rolled out of bed and walked across the balcony to Suchirita's room! I remember the cast party for the 9th and 10th One Act Plays and that crazy night. That night when four of us went down. I remember writing that email to your parents when you got caught smoking at school. I remember writing that email thrice man. You never learnt then. And I blame myself somehow.
I remember that Sunday so fucking clearly it scares me. I remember there was smoke everywhere and roaches on the window sills and weed on the floor. I remember how my heart stopped when the dorm-relief walked in. I remember how I got that feeling. The beginning of the end.
I remember planning to bribe the medical store man. Being called in for questioning by Mrs. Ford. Hating her. Hating the system. I remember, like it was yesterday, Sid shrugging and saying that there was no point praying to God about this. We were in the wrong anyways. We couldn't ask God to change the rules of morality. I remember wanting to punch him for saying that. But knowing, deep inside, that he was right. He was dead-on right.
I remember the day we all said goodbye. I remember that imaginary toast I proposed, my voice cracking. All of us standing outside Lochend. Waiting for your bus. I remember walking you to the bus-stop at 6. Saying our last goodbyes. The promises to keep in touch. You'd be back in May to visit. All that. Seeing you one last time. Walking back to school as you rode on to another life.
I remember how the remaining two and a half years of school just wasn't the same without you. But we got by. You called. Aditi stayed on for a semester and she moved on to Sam. The phone-calls got sparser. We tried emailing. I hadn't heard from you in ages.
And then I remember the day I found out. I had known you had ran away from home. But the day I found out that there was a possibility you were dead, I remember how crushed I felt. How helpless. I remember staying awake till two in the night, wondeing if somewhere out there, you were alive or not. I couldn't bear the thought of you dying alone somewhere, under some bridge, with no hope in sight. I couldn't bear the thought of you dead. I still can't. I can't bring myself to think of it in that way. I hope you didn't do it man. I hope you're just bloody good at hiding. You always were when we were kids. You were always the last one to be found at hide and seek. I hope you didn't do it. You have so much to live for. We were supposed to start a band together. Make music. Laugh. Cry. Live.
I still hope bro. I swear, I always will. Until you're found. Alive or otherwise. I always will.
But Johnny. This is not a eulogy. This is not goodbye.

[ If anyone has any information about a Johnathan Marak who has been missing for seven months, please contact the author at pukstar@gmail.com ]

My Personal Statement for Lynn University

I rarely boast about my own writing but this is brilliant. It's a personal statement I wrote for Lynn University in the states. I think I got in. But then again, with writing like this, who the hell could refuse? Lol. Forgive me but, hey, I'm allowed to be egostical once in while.

Someone I know once complained that her dreams lacked strength and that her passions were futile. I consider myself to be a fairly contemplative person, rather idealistic at times, and such a statement caused me to question the very nature of my own dreams and the quintessence of my passions. Though the incident may seem inconsequential, it provoked me to reevaluate my life so far and who I ultimately wish to be. And though the question seems to be yet another of Life’s mysteries we are simply meant not to make sense of, I felt a deep loss when it occurred to me that my dreams and passions may be too weak and futile to be realized.

Since I entered high school, I have dreamt of becoming a doctor. I nurtured my dream into my senior year, and along with my compassion for the underprivileged of India, decided to dedicate my life to the many that lack basic health care. My passion for writing, at one point of time, conflicted with this dream but I realized the fact that writing can be treated, with equal interest and dedication, as a hobby alongside an occupation. In India, the dream of becoming a doctor is immensely clichéd. Indian parents wish for their child to become either a doctor or an engineer merely because of the financial stability and social standing that is attained in doing so. My liberal (yet inherently Christian) upbringing allowed me the freedom of realizing my own dreams and my parents did not impose their desires on me. I am justified, thus, in considering my intention of becoming a doctor as a product of genuine passion and aspiration. Yet, all this hung by a single thread of faith as I considered the frightening possibility: were my dreams essentially hollow? Was I revolving my whole life around castles in the sky? Was there anything else except mere fancy that comprised the passion that saturated my dreams? All my life I had believed in the potency of my dreams and, for the first time, I found myself questioning their very constitution.

The profundity and beauty of truth lies in the fact that it is experienced in one’s moment of extreme vulnerability. Through all the noise that deafened my mind in my moment of doubt, it was the small, pure whisper of truth that seemed the most certain. I just had to recognize it. I realized that my dreams did lack strength and that my passions were futile. But what did my dreams need to be stronger then? What made my passions futile? It was in my moment of truth that I realized that the only things my dreams had to be stronger than were my doubts; the only thing that can limit the power of my passions is myself. When I become my future, the future becomes mine.

Passive

"I went to Bermuda this weekend. What did you do? Watched poker on TV?"
"NO!"
Silence. Thinking.
"I played it on the Internet."

It rained today. I was playing the guitar when it started raining. I played along to the pattering for a while and then imagined the rain pattering along to what I was playing.
It didn't. Mother Nature sets her own beat. Or has a dumbass sense of rhythm.

I left all the windows in the house open because I absolutely love the smell of fresh rain on parched earth. It smells new. Alive. Revived. Like a reunion of lovers.
It made me happy. In a sad way.

Dinkz used to love the fog back in Kodai. I never understood why. It depressed me somehow. If I could personify fog, it would be this hunch-backed, deceitful crook, blinding and distorting, enveloping all in a thick shroud. Dinkz always saw the beauty in things I never could. And I guess I could see why she loved fog.
It's beautiful. In an eerie way.

Life is too revealing. You see things about people you were better off not seeing. You're cinematic, razor sharp. You're everything I hoped you would never be. You scare me with every new, wickedly unexpected turn.

But I'm settled. In a violent way.

...11:10 p.m... Drum-set - Wanworie Day

I miss far too much. God, I miss school. I miss people there. I miss the way I felt when I heard Clumsy for the first time. I miss the snow. I miss 4 foot 3. I miss not caring. I miss my Macintosh LC with its screwed up monitor. I miss my Fossil. I miss you goddamit. I miss Fays. I miss being shy. I miss my misplaced sense of fashion. I miss Mr. Warring. I miss Vasu. I miss my grandpa. I miss Hannah, my darling niece. I miss 1997. I miss my BMX Twister. I miss feeling utterly empty, filling myself with the chapel piano. I miss you singing. I miss your randomness. I miss my former roomies.
There's so much I don't have anymore.

'I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You' by Colin Hay

To 'you':
I drink good coffee every morning
Comes from a place that's far away
And when I'm done I feel like talking
Without you here there is less to say
I don't want you thinking I'm unhappy
What is closer to the truth
That if I lived 'til I was 102
I just don't think I'll ever get over you
I'm no longer moved to drink strong whisky
'Cause I shook the hand of time and I knew
That if I lived 'til I could no longer climb my stairs
I just don't think I'll ever get over you
Your face it dances and it haunts me
Your laughter's still ringing in my ears
I still find pieces of your presence here
Even after all these years
But I don't want you thinking I don't get asked to dinner
'Cause I'm here to say that I sometimes do
Even though I may soon feel the touch of love
I just don't think I'll ever get over you
If I lived 'til I was 102
I just don't think I'll ever get over you