Every Ending is new beginning

In this gripping piece of flash fiction, a mysterious man in Pune, Ritwik Shah, keeps coming back from the dead - car crash, fire, drowning - only to reappear weeks later. Blending sci-fi short stories, urban legends, and themes of immortality, the tale explores what happens when one life keeps multiplying with purpose.

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The town of Pune had one peculiar headline that surfaced every few years:

"Ritwik Shah is dead."

Car crash. Gunshot. Fire. Even drowning, once.

Each time, there was a body. Identified. Dear ones did mourned.

And yet, weeks later, Ritwik would be seen again - walking past the bakery, nodding at the postman, sipping tea in his worn-out trench coat.

“Maybe he had a twin.” 

“No, no… a doppelgänger.”

“Must be a ghost.”

“A government clone project!”

He never explained. Just smiled with a tired warmth like someone who'd watched too many winters pass by.

I was ten the first time I saw Ritwik die. I watched from across the street, eyes wide, breath held. The body was recovered, burned beyond recognition. They said it was him. Two weeks later, I saw him sitting on the same park bench, tossing crumbs to pigeons.

“Someone else,” my father said. But I knew better. Those eyes didn’t lie.

As I grew older, so did my obsession.

Five times. Then seven. Then twelve. I read every news clipping, spoke to neighbors, tracked down doctors, even the undertaker who swore he’d buried Ritwik once—maybe twice. But he always came back. Quieter. Always the same man.

Until last year. A child fell into a flooded canal. A stranger leapt in and saved him. A teenager filmed it, and by nightfall, the world was asking: “Is this the man who died in 2020… and again in 2022?”

One lucky day, I finally got to sit across from him. One café. Two cups of mint tea.

“How many times have you died?” I asked, unable to mask the tremble in my voice.

He looked at me, eyes more alive than I expected. He smiled, like someone who’s rehearsed this answer in silence for too long. “Fourteen. Maybe fifteen. I lose count.”

“You’re immortal?”

“No.”

“Then… how are you here?”

He paused. Looked at his fingers, then back at me.

“Have you heard how amoebas multiply?”

I blinked. “You mean… splitting?”

He nodded. Slowly.

“Every time I die, a part of me doesn’t.

It... divides.

One death becomes two lives.

Two become four.

Not clones. Not copies. Continuations.”

He leaned forward.

“Somewhere else in this city, someone wakes up with my eyes. My voice. My memories. But slightly… different.”

A lump rose in my throat. “So how many of you are there now?”

He exhaled. Shrugged.

“Dozens. Maybe more.

We don’t all meet. Some move away. Some forget.

Some... take their own lives before it begins again.”

I whispered, “Which one are you?”

He smiled again. A smile full of quiet tragedy.

“Maybe the first. Maybe the fifteenth.

Maybe just one echo of many.”

“Doesn’t that feel... lonely?”

He glanced out the window again, then met my gaze. His eyes carried storms and stillness in equal measure.

“The first time I came back… it was by accident.

The second… I realized it was choice.

But by the fifth… I understood it was purpose.”

I frowned. “What purpose?”

He tapped his chest. Lightly. Deliberately.

“To show up. In more places.

To love more people.

To hold more hands during their worst nights.

To pull a child from a flood.

To talk someone down from a ledge.

To sit quietly beside an old man dying alone.”

He smiled, but this time it trembled.

“One life wasn’t enough to do all the good I wanted.

He stood up, left a note to cover the tea.

“If you ever see me again…

ask which one I am.

You might find an entirely new answer.”

And just like that, he walked away.

The End.

Or perhaps… just one of many beginnings.

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