Writing the Future

Insane instances about rejections sound unreal. In a world where nothing but success glitters and nothing but luck favours, stories about rejection sound like medicines for depression -- a fake candy for a diabetic, a tranq for the nervous. Have you ever wondered why are there so many writers in this world who are in debt, poor and sad? They breed happiness but cannot feed on it themselves. Sorry, I speak for myself. I have come to that stage where I have accepted that the myth around JK Rowling's success story is exactly that -- a myth. She must belong to the magical fraternity, who came out to the muggle world one day and decided to give it a taste of where she hails from. No other explanation can convince me that things 'happened' to her. Yes, I have become a pathetic, pragmatic pessimist. Pessimist I always was, atleast earlier I was a jovial human-being. Or so I thought. I was never jovial. I just had a happy demeanour.

For all those who remember me as happy-go-lucky, I was that face, yes. But I always had clever confusions killing me, I had the company of doubt and low self-esteem groping me. Wisely, the other face clowned it. Looking back now, to that chair in which I sat to do unending Maths and that sofa on where legs crossed I settled, writing letters and doodling, I always had thoughts -- dementors -- all over me. And day-dreams -- my patronus. That is all of my childhood I can look back to, struggling to stay awake, fighting my biggest enemy The Boards Expectations. I had stage fright, people fright, yet I wanted to be famous. Should have figure it out then, I dwell in dichotomies. 

And they tell me, those who read me, I am good, I am bloody good, and publishable. I got one of those calls again today, and I pulled my car to the side, and took the call. A casual voice, genuine in its HR-intent to rope in a candidate, asked me, "What have you written?" I was on a speeding highway, with cars zooming past me. With due seriousness to the question, the fallacy of the situation made me answer ridiculously honestly, "I have attempted answers, done content, I am pursuing a dissertation (which I am pretty sure, she does not know the meaning of), and also written what we call creative writing."

"Oh, nice, nice, Kuntala." Yes nice indeed. What have you written? I started the car. "A 'bright' English-student," as the phrase is popular, I wrote applications and invites. For people in my family, and their birthday parties, for those dead, and for many who take the living for granted -- I have written, I have written and I have fucking written. Endlessly. But you see, it is not a song that people queue up in honourable silence to intellectually praise, nor is it a piece of painting unaffordably priced; it is just language, something we all know, we all speak and need not specialise in. It is a matter of permutation, combination and patience to place a rhyme or prose in their proper position.

What have I written, really? The moment I try to make a selection, I reject them myself, "the mass won't understand." And so, the meek me slices them gregariously and makes me think of what magic I need to unearth to build a story to meet myths of "luck meets talent." Strangely, while I think I will distract myself online, I find hundreds of writers. Even more strangely, none of them are in debt or doubt, they bask in self-love and are well-to-do, instant popularity comes free these days. They don't seem sad too, I am relieved. May be one day I will be too, and on my epitaph my favourite words for me would outlive me, "Well-loved and best-selling..."

The only good thing about this piece? I have come to terms with my identity.

I am a writer, a creative writer. And one day, I will write only for myself.
No invitations, no alterations -- just what you would like to read while going off to sleep.