“Yes. They are all so old, in the seventies and eighties, and far less … dramatic. It’s an American audience, after all. So many of the other cases are set in exotic places, and that’s good, but we also need to focus more on the American stories. So people can connect.”
He cleared his throat, buying himself time. “But people can connect,” he said slowly, carefully repeating her words like a child learning to speak, or a sixty-eight-year-old losing his vocabulary. “This isn’t an American story. It’s a—” What was the word he was searching for? Something vast that contained all the planets and solar systems inside it. He couldn’t find the word so switched tactics: “It’s a story for everyone.” Gesturing widely and invisibly with his hands, as if to encompass everything he meant but couldn’t say.
“Right. But the only recent American case you have here … you know, in which the child remembers being his own great-uncle?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the other cases seem stronger somehow.”
“Well, of course.”
“Why of course?”
“When the subject is a member of the same family you can’t really verify the facts in the same way.”
“Right. What I mean is, we need one or two strong new cases. American cases. To anchor the book.”
“Oh. But—”
“Yes?”
He opened his mouth. The objections rose within him: My office is closed. I haven’t had a new case in six months.… There are not as many strong American cases, anyway. I’m not sure I can even write a cogent sentence, much less a chapter.…
“All right,” he said. “That’s fine. An American case.”
“A strong one. So we’re on the same page?”
He stifled a laugh. He was exhilarated, reckless. He was slipping down the mountain now, tumbling, head over heels. “Yes.”
Purnima Ekanayake, a girl in Sri Lanka, was born with a group of light-colored birthmarks over the left side of her chest and her lower ribs. She began talking about a previous life when she was between two and a half and three years old, but her parents did not initially pay much attention to her statements. When she was four years old, she saw a television program about the Kelaniya temple, a well-known temple that was 145 miles away, and said that she recognized it. Later, her father, a school principal, and her mother, a teacher, took a group of students to the Kelaniya temple. Purnima went with the group on the visit. While there, she said that she had lived on the other side of the river that flowed beside the temple grounds.
By the time she was six, Purnima had made some twenty statements about the previous life, describing a male incense maker who was killed in a traffic accident. She had mentioned the names of two incense brands, Ambiga and Geta Pichcha. Her parents had never heard of these, and … [none of] the shops in their town … sold those brands of incense.
A new teacher began working in Purnima’s town. He spent his weekends in Kelaniya where his wife lived. Purnima’s father told him what Purnima had said, and the teacher decided to check in Kelaniya to see if anyone had died there who matched her statements. The teacher said that Purnima’s father gave him the following items to check:
—She had lived on the other side of the river from the Kelaniya temple.
—She had made Ambiga and Geta Pichcha incense sticks.
—She was selling incense sticks on a bicycle.
—She was killed in an accident with a big vehicle.
He then went with his brother-in-law, who did not believe in reincarnation, to see if a person matching those statements could be located. They went to the Kelaniya temple and took a ferry across the river. There, they asked about incense makers and found that three small family incense businesses were in the area. The owner of one of them called his brands Ambiga and Geta Pichcha. His brother-in-law and associate, Jinadasa Perera, had been killed by a bus when he was taking incense sticks to the market on his bicycle two years before Purnima was born.
Purnima’s family visited the owner’s home soon after. There, Purnima made various comments about family members and their business that were correct, and the family accepted her as being Jinadasa reborn.
JIM B. TUCKER, M.D., LIFE BEFORE LIFE
Nine
Janie closed the book in her hand and frowned into the depths of the diner. She was waiting for a man she didn’t know, whose work was either mind shattering or total baloney, and who now held Noah’s future in the palm of his hand. And she couldn’t even get through his book.