We tend to take life for granted. We keep chasing elusive goals set by others for us! Paulo Coelho’s VERONIKA DECIDES TO DIE reminds us to really LIVE life each day as opposed to just existing.The story kicks-off when Veronika, well, decides to die! Veronika, a 24-yr old has all that a 24-yr old desires, decides to die because she thinks she has spent her life to the full extent and carrying on will only lead to miseries. She takes the cleanest way out-An overdose of Sleeping pills. A failed attempt lands her in Villete, a lunatic asylum where she is told that she has damaged her heart to such an extent that she has only a week to live!In these last few days, Veronika notices the privileges of being mad, of not needing to be true on others expectations, of doing one’s own things without people pointing fingers at you because afterall you are mad! Veronika learns learns life was monotonous because that’s the way she wanted it to be. She never tried out anything new. She should have been a little mad. Afterall her family would still have loved her!Paulo’s Veronika decides to die plucks a string somewhere deep down our hearts. It gives us the message that every moment in our lives is worth living. “Live each day as if it were a miracle”, he tells us. And Veronika does just that. In her last few days she indulges herself in all that she had deprived herself of, like playing the piano in the dead of the night, openly voicing hurt, anger, frustration, love, her most intimate desires that were bottled inside her for the last 24 years coz she was ‘sane’ then.

Veronika sheds her inhibitions, negativities, complexes and feels a by now futile wish to live again. Futile because she has just a weeks time after which she’s gonna die, or is she?