Rejected? What the hell??

Its easy to say that one should take rejections in their stride. Trust me, its a very bitter pill. Now that I write and make submissions at a lot of places, its encouraging to get responses which are positive. But yesterday when I got a mail from someone who said- "We are afraid we will not be able to accommodate your piece this time........please keep submitting in future....this is not a comment on your style of writing........we love you but just that we do not love you right now.......". Yes, I made up this last line but the politeness with which this rejection came was so poorly disguised in encouragement, that it taught me an important lesson.

It made me ask myself as to why the hell am I not taking this in a good spirit? I know why! Because I have been loved way too much first by my parents, then by my sibling, then by Saurabh, then by his mother and latest by my sons! I haven't told any of them yet about this mail and I already know their reactions(listed below) which are my life lines, my motivations to keep making mistakes, my reasons for not accepting the fact that someone can REJECT me!!!!

• My Dad keeps a track of what all I am doing with my new writing career. Yesterday too, he probed me on our phone call if everything was alright with me. I did not tell him about this mail. He will read about it now through this post and definitely feel as bad as I have felt and say to me : "Arre unhe aata hi nahi padhna. Tu chinta mat kar. You are a star"
• Saurabh also isnt aware of this mail. Now when he will read this blog he will call me to know what exactly happened and why I didnt share this news with him. I can hear him say : "You cant expect everyone to like you babe. I know you are the best!"
• Rahul is the biggest spoiler of the lot. He will read this blog post late tonight. Then he will wait for me to wake up in the morning. Then he will call me around 10 am and say: "@#%$& reject kar diya? Di you send me the story. I will bloody get it published"
• My Mom will get to know about this from Papa. She will casually mention it in our daily call and comment : "Are you alright? Keep writing okay? If they dont understand, someone else will"

Does this mean that we should stop loving our kids, harden ourselves so we can teach them to take failure in their stride? Oh not at all! It just quietly and profoundly (is this even a word?) tells me that I should prepare V and N like this- "What you may mean to me, you may not mean to the big bad world outside- the day you decide to make them privy to your innate thoughts, beliefs and creativity. But I know that you are damn good and Mamma will always keep you insulated when others judge you". It keeps me going now and it will keep them going then too :)

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