Eighteen Candles for a Arunay Whose Name Is on Life Rings on That Coastline

I want to tell you about a special boy.

It's not easy. It's definitely not. Because some people move through this world and leave something behind that you can actually feel, in the people who knew them, in the rooms they used to walk into, in the quiet that comes after they're gone. Arunay was one of those people.

Most of us spend years becoming who we are.

Arunay seemed to arrive that way.

Arunay. A boy with a smile that people carried with them for years without even realizing they were carrying it. Just.. there it was, years later, still warm, in their memory.

Arunay who lost his life too early. He was twelve years old when the ocean took him.

He was someone's son. Someone's big brother. Someone's teammate, someone's student, someone's friend who made every room feel like it had been waiting for him to walk into it.

On what would have been his 18th birthday, Sharmistha and his father Tarun opened their home. They invited everyone who had known him, his teachers, his friends, the family friends who had watched him grow. They came to speak about him. To give his parents back every moment they hadn't been there to witness. Every story that lived in someone else's memory.

And people spoke.

His friends talk about the soccer field. How he taught them to play. Patient. Generous. Good at the thing, but quiet about being good at it. We always looked up to him, one friend said. He was a great leader. Nice, funny, kind. Just someone who made everyone feel welcome.

"We always looked up to him. He was a great leader, taught all of us how to play soccer and cricket, and he was always so good at those things.

"My memory of Arunay is always filled with laughter. He was always smiling, always laughing, I've never seen him upset."

"Just someone who made everyone feel welcome."

I keep coming back to that line.

Most adults spend their whole lives chasing that and never quite getting there. Arunay did it naturally, effortlessly, without seeming to notice he was doing it at all.

Family friends remember how as a kid on late nights on vacation, he'd pull everyone into poker games, into rounds of Among Us, into whatever was happening. He was unpredictable at the table, sharp, quick, full of sharp one-liners you didn't see coming. "You could never read his face. And yet, no matter how the night ended, no matter who won or lost, he was never a sore loser. His friends say it like it's the most ordinary thing."

"I remember when my wife and I were in Chicago, that's when I first met Arunay. He was just a toddler then, clinging to Sharmista all the time, and he had that same smile even back then."

That kind of grace, at twelve, at any age is a character. That's something you're made of.

His teacher watched him sit down when a book, when the book is asking you something real about yourself. I felt privileged, he said. "Privileged to read stories with him, to see his writing, where he was exploring big questions we all ask. He asked questions that stayed with us. The kind we hold in our hearts."

"I got to teach Arunay for multiple years — starting when he was nine, ten, and twelve. There's something really intimate about getting to know a child over all that time.He was somebody who really knew what he loved and what he was doing. I felt privileged to read stories with him, to see his writing, where he was exploring big questions we all ask."

A family friend, who had watched Arunay grow for years, said this, he was still a little surprised by the truth of it: Without realizing it, you've influenced so much in my life. He'd seen the kindness up close.

"Ever since you were little, one of the biggest things I always looked forward to was meeting with you, playing with you, seeing your kindness, the empathy in your eyes, your gentle demeanor. All of that made me a big fan of yours. Without realizing it, you've influenced so much in my life."

The innocence it takes to be courageous, and the courage it takes to be innocent.

Yes. That. Exactly that.That was Arunay.

That is a legacy.

That is a whole, entire legacy.

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What do you do when love and grief has nowhere left to go?

You build something.

The Arunay Foundation is what Sharmistha and Tarun built. To take the most devastating truth of their lives.Yes, Arunay Foundation was born from the refusal to let his light go quiet. From the deep, aching, active love of two parents who asked themselves what they could do with this grief and answered with something that might save other families from standing where they stand.

The foundation works to raise beach awareness and ocean safety.

They create awareness amony people who arrive at the beach full of excitement and completely unaware. They talk about rip currents. About sneaker waves. About the way the ocean can change in a single second without giving you any warning at all. More than a thousand children went home knowing something they didn't know before.

Till date 30 life rings along the Northern California coastline has been installed. Each one bolted to a post at a beach where the water runs dangerous. Each one carrying 150 feet of rope. Enough to reach someone. Enough to bring them back.

Never again, Sharmistha said, should anyone lose their loved one to the sea.

A mother's vow.

Made on the worst day of her life. Kept every single day since.

Arunay would have been eighteen this year.

Eighteen.

His parents gathered a room of people who loved him. His mother heard all of his stories people close to him shared. She sat and she listened and she received every story as a treasure. As evidence. As the thing she will return to, again and again, in the quiet moments when the house is too still and his birthday comes around and the sea is still just the sea.

"Your presence lives on with us". Physically, you will be missed, but emotionally and in spirit, you remain.

He remains.

In parents who took the most devastating loss imaginable and turned it, with trembling and love and extraordinary courage, into something that protects other people's children.

We don't get to know what eighteen would have looked like on him.

But we know who he was.

We know exactly who he was.

And now, so do you.

Happy birthday, Arunay.

The Arunay Foundation educates, equips, and informs, so that every family that walks toward the water walks back home. If his story found you today, visit arunayfoundation.org. Donate. Volunteer. Share his name. A trip to the beach should be safe for every family. Help us make it so.