It's not like in the movies

Prologue- The One Where I Die. And...

I can't tell when exactly it all began. But for as long as I can remember, I found comfort in watching bittersweet movies with a happy ending. You know the type: A very pleasant opening scene that falls into the deep trench of emotional conflicts that leaves me with tears running down my cheeks. Then voila! Everything resolves which leaves both the characters and me contained and peaceful. So, whenever I feel everything goes blue, I watch them and I cry and cry and find happiness in it. One might label it as sadistic, like my friends. But those who think like that are idiots who are deeply unfamiliar with this one word known as cathartic, just like my friends.

These movies give me a way to cry over imaginary conflicts and find peace in their resolutions rather than facing my own issues. What could be easier than losing myself in a story for an hour or two, and coming out of it with a mind as clear as a fresh sheet of paper? Gosh, I love easy ways. It is the reason I even started watching and reading fantasies. Imaginary worlds offer imaginary solutions to imaginary problems. Time travel, reincarnation, magic – you name it. I ponder over how the characters work through those easy ways like magic to overcome their hurdles wishing I had these powers. Imagine Harry Potter, If I had a fraction of the power that Harry had, I would rule the world. Maybe that is precisely why I lack such power. The world is not ready for Queens like me.

So, it was only natural that on that fine hot summer evening in India, I found myself watching the last Harry Potter movie. When Harry killed Voldemort and the movie flashed forward to 19 years, I found myself wishing something similar in my life- to kill my team manager- my nemesis- like that and skip to 19 years later when I have a mansion and a bank account full of money, and I died.

I can't say exactly how it happened. Perhaps it was a heart attack caused by a load of unrealistic expectations I was placing on my heart. But I had no idea how it happened because I was so dead.

And just for you to know, It is incredibly unfair that most deceased are denied the means to know how they met their death. I think it is like trapped in one hell of a void stretching, I am sure, a distance farther than outer space. Or is it a vacuum, like outer space? Or perhaps a black hole, where time and space do not exist? But I have no idea. Even for dead people, death remains an enigma. I wish there were some arrangements to make sense of it all. But never mind, that is not important.

The important thing is a question, a question you should ask me. If dead people do not exist like I just mentioned above. If the dead exist in a state I've just described, how is it that I, the author of this narrative, can communicate with you? Well, It's almost reminiscent of the movies I am overly fond of. Except that it was not really like that in those movies.

Yup, with a stress on the P. I was reincarnated. I can't say how or for how long I remained dead before being reborn. It simply happened. Where my previous life ended just when I was 24 and single and still waiting for my happy ending, my melodramatic movie of a life turned into a fantasy thriller.

See, I don't think I have anything new to give you about the story of my previous life. It is, as you might have already guessed, a predictable storyline, as all reincarnation tales tend to be. A "hell is this human being" with all the issues in this world reincarnated into a grand world full of roses and daisies. It is kind of true, yes. I was an average over-achieving Indian girl born into a family with psychological issues ranging from alcoholism to suicide ideation, the latter being my own. I was waiting for a happy ending only to be denied by the psychopathic moron known as death. Yes Death, Go to hell.

I desired to live one more day filled with hopes for a better future than the desire to end my life. Just one day. And I died. The next thing I knew, I was sitting on a swing, wearing a little pink dress gazing down at my unusually small feet. That was when memories started flooding back to me like a familiar tune during a difficult exam.

I was dead and I was born again and at the age of 6, I regained the memories of a life I'd rather forget.

And this is not the reincarnation that I expected.