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 ]

The Calm Before the Storm

The LGM-118A Peacekeeper MIRVed land-based ICBM. Conventional nuclear missles carry one warhead. The Peacekeepr carries ten, each capable of hitting ten different targets. Each warhead is armed with a 300-kiloton W87 warhead. It was designed to be a counter measure against missile-defense systems and was, in particular, a counter-measure agaisnt hardened Russian missile silos housing the ten-warhead SS-18 MIRVed land-based ICBM.
In the above time-lapsed picture, a Peacekeeper missile is being tested at the Kwajalein Atoll. Each line you see against the sky represents one nuclear warhead. And each warhead has the explosive power of 25 Hiroshimas. In total, that's 250 Hiroshimas. That's 35,000,000 deaths, if one tends to conversatively estimate. That's almost the entire population of Poland.
One missile.
And yet, this picture made my heart skip a beat. Luminous white lines, penetrating the clouds, lighting up the pre-dawn sky. It's almost angelic.
3000 kilotons of horrific beauty.

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.

Happiness is not... a fish? (no shit sherlock!)

Eight out of nine flushed. Not bad.

Some people would rather have a rainy, depressing Monday morning than a lazy, boring Sunday afternoon. I never fully got what Raine Maida meant by "Happiness is not a fish you can catch". Until today.
"Everyone you meet today is just so ****ing vain."

I want an iPod.
I could probably sell my life to some emo-punk artist or something. For inspiration. And buy all the iPods I could ever want. Hell, I could buy Apple.
What say Jimmy Eat World? Writer's block?

"Bored again by happiness / All those friends I've lost in there"
Speechless. (The I-couldn't-say-it-better kind of speechless).

"F***"
Speechless. (The I-wish-I-could-say-it-better kind of speechless).

It bores you. Honestly, it bores you.

I'm bored.

Make that nine.

A Post

I'm afraid that I might have nothing non-cliched to say. Nothing the world hasn't heard already. Nothing the world doesn't already know. World? What world? In the raging, boundless ocean the Internet has become, what am I? An obscure, tiny lifeboat.

Just write. Someone will read. Someone will understand. Someone. Somewhere.

(My CPU is on the ground. My right foot just spasmed and hit the reset button. I went and got a glass of cold water as the computer restarted. My head hurts. Bloody spasms.)

I realized I was in denial today. There's only so much you can justify. I wish it wasn't true. But it could be. 'Could' is a very strong word. It's the first step out of denial.

Write something. Anything. Someone, somewhere will understand.

E wrote a short story today. It's really cute. Expected worse but it was nice. Maya. Wilson. Mowoski. Honestly E, if anything, you come up with way better names then I do. :)

Watched The Bicycle Thief today. The film that inspired Satyajit Ray. I was told not to expect too much. Felt sad at the end. Felt like learning Italian. Or re-learning Spanish.

Anything. Someone. Somewhere.

I guess that's the beautiful thing about the Internet. You can believe in "someones" and "somewheres".

"'Cause in my head
There's a Greyhound station
Where I set my thoughts
To far-off destinations
So they may have a chance
Of finding a place where they're
Far more suited than here. "

- Soul Meets Body by Death Cab for Cutie

Noone understands my favourite band. Noone understands their cryptic lyrics. Their meandering poetry.Their 'darkened optimism'.

Noone understands me when I say 'registration'. I somehow slur the whole word. No matter how hard I try. I mean, sometimes I make it. Or the people I'm talking to are used to weird accents. But most of the time it's a slur.

Noone understands me when I laugh. I laugh at the weirdest things. I laugh during sad movies. I laugh the hardest at stupid jokes. I laugh at lines in books that everyone else finds normal. Or even dumb. I laugh at babies. In the mean way.

Noone understands me when I say 'I love you'. I love too liberaly. Too carelessly. Too damn freely. I mean all three syllables. I mean them to death.
Noone understands my depressing blogs.