Taking a Moment Off to Say Thank You

I have always wanted to be a professional writer. The joy of creating something out of nothing has driven me towards this path. All I wanted was to earn a living selling my writing. A simple task, don’t you think? Wwwweeeelllll………not really. Ask me what I have been through before I sold my first writing.

I have passed out from a school where the first lesson of English started from the sixth standard. The day I held my first English text book in my hand is still vivid in my mind. I remember touching the cover with the affection of a painter touching the canvas of the painting after finishing it. I remember feeling a twinge of fright. I knew that I was stepping into an unknown territory.

Not knowing what awaits in the turf I am about to traverse, sent a sharp shiver down my spine. I welcomed the fear. It felt good. It felt almost sacred. I turned the cover of Learning English (the English text book for Bengali medium students) and looked inside. It started with a lesson of ABCD. Imagine learning ABCD at the age of twelve. It’s true my father had taught me the alphabets long before I reached sixth standard. But the lesson ended there and I learnt no more.

As the lesson in school began, I discovered that I was not at all good in the language. Still I felt drown towards English and wanted to learn it. How I did, although I am still learning, is another story, one that I don’t want to tell.

I kept trying until I could overcome the fear and begin to enjoy the splendor of English. My next hurdle was to get myself a job of a writer – any job would have done it. This obstacle almost shattered me to the pieces. How many times I got rejected, I don’t even know. Some employers laughed at my attempt to write for a living, some challenged me and told me that I would never make it. One of them even went ahead and told that I write words without even knowing the meanings.

I took them all. Embraced the criticism, sometimes antagonism and proceeded. When I failed to walk, I crawled ahead. But I kept moving and kept learning. I wrote things knowing that no one would read them, knowing no one would pay for them. Yet I wrote.

I won’t say I have reached my destination. In this profession there is no such thing, there is only a road through which you can walk ahead. But no matter how far you walk, this path will never end. There is another specialty of this boulevard – here exists no rule. It is amazing. And finally I realized that nothing does matter. Whether I get published or I get rejected hardly counts to me. I have the ability to create and now I am making a living writing. Every paycheck that I receive is a reward to me. I cherish money now, because now I make money doing what I do best.

Never had I thought about stopping and bowing my head down in respect and say thanks for all these. Never had I cared. I never expressed gratitude for the nudge I received whenever I stopped. Today, however, I think the time has at last come to say thank you to the angles who has guided me throughout and hope will be there forever.