WHAT IF the Universe assigned you a genre each year ?

By prisha nanda, (economics honours, second year)

Designed and edited by mehak koundal, (B.com program, first year)

Imagine waking up on 1st January to a special notification. One that stamps your next year with a genre. "Congratulations! Your genre for 2026 is...romance comedy." Great. Time to start missing flights and fighting with strangers in front of the ice cream freezer at the grocery store.

Maybe your friend got thriller as her genre, so while you're bantering with your rival about who's smarter, she's flighty, double-checking every locked door and suspiciously eyeing...your dog?

Comedy years would be the easiest to spot; you could practically hear the laughing track. Their behaviour almost cartoonish as they slip on a banana peel that materialised out of nowhere, or attempt to get away from the squirrels that are currently circling them.

Romance years would be the most demanded, even if they led to a suspicious rise in meet-cutes that were borderline stalkerish (but it's fine because this is a romance, right?).The start of a Fantasy year wouldn't be too far off from Percy Jackson's first few days as a demigod—your best friend turns out to be a 30-year-old satyr, your math teacher transforms into an actual monster and attacks you in an art museum but it's fine because your Latin teacher is half-horse and gifts you a pen that's also a sword.

The universe would be mostly impartial, unless, of course, you signed up for the premium cosmic plan (because capitalism reigns, even in alternate universes). You could dodge a Horror year entirely if you have enough money, or at least get it downgraded to only "mildly unsettling." Some premium members even opt for the sub-genres they want. A Hallmark Christmas romance, for example, would mean you're suddenly applying for a big shot journalist position and travelling to a small town where you fall in love with the charm of small town life, its kind but nosy people, and of course, the broody innkeeper.

This impartiality, however, doesn't mean subtlety. Like if you woke up in 2026 and stepped outside to find corsets everywhere, duels as the latest conflict resolution, and your dinner laced with an interesting amount of arsenic... well, that's when you'd realise you've been assigned historical fiction.

The real problem, though? When your coworker is in a Tragedy year, your boss is in Fantasy, and you're stuck in Comedy. Because, should you be more concerned by the coworker bawling in the corner of the room, the dragon who's breathing fire onto the quarterly performance reports in the storage room or about the fact that the squirrels are still following you?