Rejection

Writing is a dog’s life, but it’s the only life worth living, said Gustave Flaubert, and how true. Your writing being rejected is part of every writer’s growing up process; every other well know book has a story of how the book was rejected by so many prestigious publication houses before it was printed and became a best-seller. These stories should give hope to a new author whose writing has been rejected. But, not always. Rejections hurt. Even when you know that your time will come. It has to.

It’s disheartening, really. You spend hours after hours, alone, scribbling, or keying in in the computer, creating something, revealing something, telling something, and then someone, you don’t even know the person, comes up and says, “it doesn’t work for him.” What do you do then?

Never mind.

For me, writing itself is writer’s reward. My writing helps me inhabit lives of other people, see the world from the perspective of someone who isn’t like me. And, believe me, that’s fantastic.

For the last few days, I am living the life of a person called Pankaj Sonawane. He’s a police inspector, who lives alone. He has a daughter, but he knows she’s not his. His wife is a local politician and she doesn’t have time for him. And, he is in a job which doesn’t give him personal space, and he’s grateful for that. For, he does not know what to do when he’s free. The job is his excuse. But, two years ago, everything changed. He met someone.

Now, he knows what he wants. And he knows he cannot have it. It’s not entirely his fault, or perhaps it was, as his private life, which he had tried so hard to hide, tried so hard to tuck away in nights of alcohol and anonymity, catches up with him, forcing him to make a choice. And, choices have consequences.

I’d like Pankaj Sonawane to be happy. But, I know, he cannot be. But, I’m glad that his choices are not mine, and his problems make my problems look like solutions.