The Suicide Note

The Suicide Note

My writing has always been liberally laced with irony; a consciously developed style thinking it would put me in the league of Post Modernist Indian authors like Ghosh,Adiga and Kaul. Admitted, I was trying to lead the reviewers of my books right where I wanted them. Ive admired these works, I live for anything in the written form and well, as destiny has it, ironically, Im dying for it too.

This is my suicide note.

I, Tejas Ray declare that no one except my own failure is responsible for this.
I,Tejas Ray am and will remain a hardly published author after more rejected manuscripts than I care to count.
and I, Tejas Ray cannot go on living the two lives I live; one of a software professional with my entire existence bound between 0 and 1 and the second of a writer, where the letters between A and Z serve as my purpose and as my passion. And so I have decided to end both.

She lived her life as if in a dream. Probably she’d describe it as Wonderland. And Alice she was, tumbling through life, starting a conversation with anything that life brought her way. Conversations of a sparkling quality, a sparkle that glinted in the mischief of her eye and in her shy smile. So Alice she was and her world, Wonderland.
Down the rabbit hole,1999
ABC Random House, Delhi

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
About the bigger ,almost always useless questions; Isnt Art more for oneself than money or audience? Aren’t artists used to rejection of their Art? Is a rejection of Art even possible; given that it is so personal and no one can possibly pass a judgement on it?
Let me tell you a story. I do this hoping someone would read this note.
Oscar Wilde spoke of the difference between living and existing. And I can only seem to live by my
words. My only published work was much appreciated, the offers to advance book manuscripts came in and I was even pursued to write the biography of a yesteryear B grade actress. Ha! She wanted to liken her mental state to my Alice; make it romantic and mysterious. Charming lady she was, but as much as I liked her, hers was a sad life and I was just starting out. Never had I thought that mine would turn out sadder than hers. I’d give an arm to be commissioned to write the biography of a cat now.
Yes I couldn’t handle rejection. Never have been able to. Changed schools after failing 11th grade. Changed cities because Calcutta didn’t give me the chance I thought it owed me. Changed my mind about love after every two years. Know that when you throw the note after reading it, I’ll take it as rejection. But its not like I’ll be able to do anything then. The term morbid sense of humor has taken on new meaning.

Ek pyaar ka nagma hai,maujon ki rawani hai
Zindagi aur kuch bhi nahi
Teri Meri kahani hai
They held each other close and swayed to the music. In the movies, theyd show this scene with dimmed lights and lit candles. Choreographed dance. In the real world, they moved side to side, no one would call this dance. His files lay strewn on the sofa, her laptop flashed a low battery sign. The light was too bright, they were dressed in trackpants. The moment was perfect..
The Song
Book of Modern Short Stories,2000
Rejected

I could console myself saying that the world wasn’t ready for me or that I should try till I succeed. I could find a reason to live in the person that I love. Except that I haven’t loved. I’ll love that person who reads my writing. I’ll love that person in whose mind my words evoke images. I’ll love that person with a passion who connects to my writing. That person connects with me.

The way you hold the sheets
The way your eyes go over a line again to
make sure of what they mean
The way you feel is a way you’d never thought you’d feel
Is it possible, this love?...
Unfinished,2002
Rejected

Strangely, I had written this a decade ago when I was toying with a new concept. Had never imagined these words would ring true in the last hours of my life. Is it really possible to be feeling a connection with you? I can imagine you sitting there, reading my words, them impacting you and then days later, over a cup of tea or a song with that sad melancholy tune, my words come back to you and you know that you can never disconnect yourself from what you have read; from what I have bared of my soul. Yes, I have bared my soul to you and I see yours too. In the crease between your brows as you try to understand me, in the way you pause between reading the lines and take in what I mean, in the way you silently answer my rhetoric questions; I see your soul and it’s a beautiful one.

..I have bared my soul to you .”
The sculptor looked up. This was probably the first time he really saw her. He heard her story in the pain in her voice. He saw before him a woman with a perfect posture, undaunted, proud yet vulnerable. As he looked at the naked sitter, she became more than that. She became a story which he must relate, the honesty of which he must preserve. He didn’t reply to her and looked down on his work, deciding to rework the deep gash on her left arm.
The Victims of Violence Series was going to be more demanding of him than he had initially thought.
The Sculpture
Book of Modern Short Stories,2000
Rejected


In my final moments, it seems like the world is a whole new place. I had never imagined it would turn out this way. I can say that I am in love with you. And I know you are in love with me too. Love is defined too rigidly in our heads, we take it as holding hands and being intimate. But what of how the heart feels? What of the intimacy I feel with you? Intimacy and Love. Big words like these shouldn’t be restricted to the small definitions we give them. I have come to feel an intimacy with you and I don’t want you to seek an explanation for this. Let it remain, let Romance be bigger than Logic, for once. Let me be. Let us be.

Love as boy and girl, holding hands is how we think of it or we have grandiose Romeo/Juliet -tragic ideas about it. Yes, love can be tragic. Love can be many things, that is the wonderful thing about as big a word as love. Along with the many things that love itself can be; happy, romantic, tragic; love is also found in the strangest of places. The inexplicable way in which you are drawn to someone or the love an artist has for his Art, more so, his audience. Love is a strong emotion and that is all that can be said definitely about it. Short lived interest in people, or a painter’s hubris isn’t love. Love is grand. Its in my connection to you, grand and inexplicable. Wonderful. Like the intimacy a woman feels with a man as she bends over the offered flame to light her cigarette, like the nakedness a photographer would feel in his own gallery as people viewed his photographs and so viewed a part of him, like the euphoria a stimulating conversation generates; ours is a connection of intimacy, vulnerability and nakedness and euphoria; one I choose to call Love. Let that be.

Love surprises us.
…He replied ‘hahaha’ to one of her jokes and waited for that beautiful mind to work in the way that it. He couldn’t help but want to describe, to categorise what he felt for her. Was it possible at all? To be in love with someone’s mind, to be so completely taken in by a person, to be in awe, to want and need a part of a person; was this possible? To want her, not as a girlfriend or any of those clearly defined relationships with clearly defined ways to be. But to just want her? And let her be what she wanted to? She pinged, her next message said…
The Message,2007
Rejected

Quoting lines from my books, I can see how the simple titles may have been a problem to the publishers. I would’ve worked on them, changed them completely, all I needed was an acceptance letter, really. Looking back, I don’t have regrets. I poured my life into what I wrote and now I have nothing more to give to them. To you, I have nothing to give either but I know that you don’t want me to. I know I have succeeded in making you feel. I know I will stay on with you. That’s all I really want.

‘I love you. It is in you that I find comfort. Are any more words necessary?’
Unfinished,2002
Rejected


From The Suicide Note of a Hardly Published Author,2012
Tejas Ray,1979-2011
ABC Random House, Delhi
Winner of Indian Man Booker,2013
Featured Book for Jaipur Literature Festival,2014

The Suicide Note

My writing has always been liberally laced with irony; a consciously developed style thinking it would put me in the league of Post Modernist Indian authors like Ghosh,Adiga and Kaul. Admitted, I was trying to lead the reviewers of my books right where I wanted them. Ive admired these works, I live for anything in the written form and well, as destiny has it, ironically, Im dying for it too.

This is my suicide note.

I, Tejas Ray declare that no one except my own failure is responsible for this.
I,Tejas Ray am and will remain a hardly published author after more rejected manuscripts than I care to count.
and I, Tejas Ray cannot go on living the two lives I live; one of a software professional with my entire existence bound between 0 and 1 and the second of a writer, where the letters between A and Z serve as my purpose and as my passion. And so I have decided to end both.

She lived her life as if in a dream. Probably she’d describe it as Wonderland. And Alice she was, tumbling through life, starting a conversation with anything that life brought her way. Conversations of a sparkling quality, a sparkle that glinted in the mischief of her eye and in her shy smile. So Alice she was and her world, Wonderland.
Down the rabbit hole,1999
ABC Random House, Delhi

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
About the bigger ,almost always useless questions; Isnt Art more for oneself than money or audience? Aren’t artists used to rejection of their Art? Is a rejection of Art even possible; given that it is so personal and no one can possibly pass a judgement on it?
Let me tell you a story. I do this hoping someone would read this note.
Oscar Wilde spoke of the difference between living and existing. And I can only seem to live by my
words. My only published work was much appreciated, the offers to advance book manuscripts came in and I was even pursued to write the biography of a yesteryear B grade actress. Ha! She wanted to liken her mental state to my Alice; make it romantic and mysterious. Charming lady she was, but as much as I liked her, hers was a sad life and I was just starting out. Never had I thought that mine would turn out sadder than hers. I’d give an arm to be commissioned to write the biography of a cat now.
Yes I couldn’t handle rejection. Never have been able to. Changed schools after failing 11th grade. Changed cities because Calcutta didn’t give me the chance I thought it owed me. Changed my mind about love after every two years. Know that when you throw the note after reading it, I’ll take it as rejection. But its not like I’ll be able to do anything then. The term morbid sense of humor has taken on new meaning.

Ek pyaar ka nagma hai,maujon ki rawani hai
Zindagi aur kuch bhi nahi
Teri Meri kahani hai
They held each other close and swayed to the music. In the movies, theyd show this scene with dimmed lights and lit candles. Choreographed dance. In the real world, they moved side to side, no one would call this dance. His files lay strewn on the sofa, her laptop flashed a low battery sign. The light was too bright, they were dressed in trackpants. The moment was perfect..
The Song
Book of Modern Short Stories,2000
Rejected

I could console myself saying that the world wasn’t ready for me or that I should try till I succeed. I could find a reason to live in the person that I love. Except that I haven’t loved. I’ll love that person who reads my writing. I’ll love that person in whose mind my words evoke images. I’ll love that person with a passion who connects to my writing. That person connects with me.

The way you hold the sheets
The way your eyes go over a line again to
make sure of what they mean
The way you feel is a way you’d never thought you’d feel
Is it possible, this love?...
Unfinished,2002
Rejected

Strangely, I had written this a decade ago when I was toying with a new concept. Had never imagined these words would ring true in the last hours of my life. Is it really possible to be feeling a connection with you? I can imagine you sitting there, reading my words, them impacting you and then days later, over a cup of tea or a song with that sad melancholy tune, my words come back to you and you know that you can never disconnect yourself from what you have read; from what I have bared of my soul. Yes, I have bared my soul to you and I see yours too. In the crease between your brows as you try to understand me, in the way you pause between reading the lines and take in what I mean, in the way you silently answer my rhetoric questions; I see your soul and it’s a beautiful one.

..I have bared my soul to you .”
The sculptor looked up. This was probably the first time he really saw her. He heard her story in the pain in her voice. He saw before him a woman with a perfect posture, undaunted, proud yet vulnerable. As he looked at the naked sitter, she became more than that. She became a story which he must relate, the honesty of which he must preserve. He didn’t reply to her and looked down on his work, deciding to rework the deep gash on her left arm.
The Victims of Violence Series was going to be more demanding of him than he had initially thought.
The Sculpture
Book of Modern Short Stories,2000
Rejected


In my final moments, it seems like the world is a whole new place. I had never imagined it would turn out this way. I can say that I am in love with you. And I know you are in love with me too. Love is defined too rigidly in our heads, we take it as holding hands and being intimate. But what of how the heart feels? What of the intimacy I feel with you? Intimacy and Love. Big words like these shouldn’t be restricted to the small definitions we give them. I have come to feel an intimacy with you and I don’t want you to seek an explanation for this. Let it remain, let Romance be bigger than Logic, for once. Let me be. Let us be.

Love as boy and girl, holding hands is how we think of it or we have grandiose Romeo/Juliet -tragic ideas about it. Yes, love can be tragic. Love can be many things, that is the wonderful thing about as big a word as love. Along with the many things that love itself can be; happy, romantic, tragic; love is also found in the strangest of places. The inexplicable way in which you are drawn to someone or the love an artist has for his Art, more so, his audience. Love is a strong emotion and that is all that can be said definitely about it. Short lived interest in people, or a painter’s hubris isn’t love. Love is grand. Its in my connection to you, grand and inexplicable. Wonderful. Like the intimacy a woman feels with a man as she bends over the offered flame to light her cigarette, like the nakedness a photographer would feel in his own gallery as people viewed his photographs and so viewed a part of him, like the euphoria a stimulating conversation generates; ours is a connection of intimacy, vulnerability and nakedness and euphoria; one I choose to call Love. Let that be.

Love surprises us.
…He replied ‘hahaha’ to one of her jokes and waited for that beautiful mind to work in the way that it. He couldn’t help but want to describe, to categorise what he felt for her. Was it possible at all? To be in love with someone’s mind, to be so completely taken in by a person, to be in awe, to want and need a part of a person; was this possible? To want her, not as a girlfriend or any of those clearly defined relationships with clearly defined ways to be. But to just want her? And let her be what she wanted to? She pinged, her next message said…
The Message,2007
Rejected

Quoting lines from my books, I can see how the simple titles may have been a problem to the publishers. I would’ve worked on them, changed them completely, all I needed was an acceptance letter, really. Looking back, I don’t have regrets. I poured my life into what I wrote and now I have nothing more to give to them. To you, I have nothing to give either but I know that you don’t want me to. I know I have succeeded in making you feel. I know I will stay on with you. That’s all I really want.

‘I love you. It is in you that I find comfort. Are any more words necessary?’
Unfinished,2002
Rejected


From The Suicide Note of a Hardly Published Author,2012
Tejas Ray,1979-2011
ABC Random House, Delhi
Winner of Indian Man Booker,2013
Featured Book for Jaipur Literature Festival,2014

The Suicide Note

My writing has always been liberally laced with irony; a consciously developed style thinking it would put me in the league of Post Modernist Indian authors like Ghosh,Adiga and Kaul. Admitted, I was trying to lead the reviewers of my books right where I wanted them. Ive admired these works, I live for anything in the written form and well, as destiny has it, ironically, Im dying for it too.

This is my suicide note.

I, Tejas Ray declare that no one except my own failure is responsible for this.
I,Tejas Ray am and will remain a hardly published author after more rejected manuscripts than I care to count.
and I, Tejas Ray cannot go on living the two lives I live; one of a software professional with my entire existence bound between 0 and 1 and the second of a writer, where the letters between A and Z serve as my purpose and as my passion. And so I have decided to end both.

She lived her life as if in a dream. Probably she’d describe it as Wonderland. And Alice she was, tumbling through life, starting a conversation with anything that life brought her way. Conversations of a sparkling quality, a sparkle that glinted in the mischief of her eye and in her shy smile. So Alice she was and her world, Wonderland.
Down the rabbit hole,1999
ABC Random House, Delhi

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
About the bigger ,almost always useless questions; Isnt Art more for oneself than money or audience? Aren’t artists used to rejection of their Art? Is a rejection of Art even possible; given that it is so personal and no one can possibly pass a judgement on it?
Let me tell you a story. I do this hoping someone would read this note.
Oscar Wilde spoke of the difference between living and existing. And I can only seem to live by my
words. My only published work was much appreciated, the offers to advance book manuscripts came in and I was even pursued to write the biography of a yesteryear B grade actress. Ha! She wanted to liken her mental state to my Alice; make it romantic and mysterious. Charming lady she was, but as much as I liked her, hers was a sad life and I was just starting out. Never had I thought that mine would turn out sadder than hers. I’d give an arm to be commissioned to write the biography of a cat now.
Yes I couldn’t handle rejection. Never have been able to. Changed schools after failing 11th grade. Changed cities because Calcutta didn’t give me the chance I thought it owed me. Changed my mind about love after every two years. Know that when you throw the note after reading it, I’ll take it as rejection. But its not like I’ll be able to do anything then. The term morbid sense of humor has taken on new meaning.

Ek pyaar ka nagma hai,maujon ki rawani hai
Zindagi aur kuch bhi nahi
Teri Meri kahani hai
They held each other close and swayed to the music. In the movies, theyd show this scene with dimmed lights and lit candles. Choreographed dance. In the real world, they moved side to side, no one would call this dance. His files lay strewn on the sofa, her laptop flashed a low battery sign. The light was too bright, they were dressed in trackpants. The moment was perfect..
The Song
Book of Modern Short Stories,2000
Rejected

I could console myself saying that the world wasn’t ready for me or that I should try till I succeed. I could find a reason to live in the person that I love. Except that I haven’t loved. I’ll love that person who reads my writing. I’ll love that person in whose mind my words evoke images. I’ll love that person with a passion who connects to my writing. That person connects with me.

The way you hold the sheets
The way your eyes go over a line again to
make sure of what they mean
The way you feel is a way you’d never thought you’d feel
Is it possible, this love?...
Unfinished,2002
Rejected

Strangely, I had written this a decade ago when I was toying with a new concept. Had never imagined these words would ring true in the last hours of my life. Is it really possible to be feeling a connection with you? I can imagine you sitting there, reading my words, them impacting you and then days later, over a cup of tea or a song with that sad melancholy tune, my words come back to you and you know that you can never disconnect yourself from what you have read; from what I have bared of my soul. Yes, I have bared my soul to you and I see yours too. In the crease between your brows as you try to understand me, in the way you pause between reading the lines and take in what I mean, in the way you silently answer my rhetoric questions; I see your soul and it’s a beautiful one.

..I have bared my soul to you .”
The sculptor looked up. This was probably the first time he really saw her. He heard her story in the pain in her voice. He saw before him a woman with a perfect posture, undaunted, proud yet vulnerable. As he looked at the naked sitter, she became more than that. She became a story which he must relate, the honesty of which he must preserve. He didn’t reply to her and looked down on his work, deciding to rework the deep gash on her left arm.
The Victims of Violence Series was going to be more demanding of him than he had initially thought.
The Sculpture
Book of Modern Short Stories,2000
Rejected


In my final moments, it seems like the world is a whole new place. I had never imagined it would turn out this way. I can say that I am in love with you. And I know you are in love with me too. Love is defined too rigidly in our heads, we take it as holding hands and being intimate. But what of how the heart feels? What of the intimacy I feel with you? Intimacy and Love. Big words like these shouldn’t be restricted to the small definitions we give them. I have come to feel an intimacy with you and I don’t want you to seek an explanation for this. Let it remain, let Romance be bigger than Logic, for once. Let me be. Let us be.

Love as boy and girl, holding hands is how we think of it or we have grandiose Romeo/Juliet -tragic ideas about it. Yes, love can be tragic. Love can be many things, that is the wonderful thing about as big a word as love. Along with the many things that love itself can be; happy, romantic, tragic; love is also found in the strangest of places. The inexplicable way in which you are drawn to someone or the love an artist has for his Art, more so, his audience. Love is a strong emotion and that is all that can be said definitely about it. Short lived interest in people, or a painter’s hubris isn’t love. Love is grand. Its in my connection to you, grand and inexplicable. Wonderful. Like the intimacy a woman feels with a man as she bends over the offered flame to light her cigarette, like the nakedness a photographer would feel in his own gallery as people viewed his photographs and so viewed a part of him, like the euphoria a stimulating conversation generates; ours is a connection of intimacy, vulnerability and nakedness and euphoria; one I choose to call Love. Let that be.

Love surprises us.
…He replied ‘hahaha’ to one of her jokes and waited for that beautiful mind to work in the way that it. He couldn’t help but want to describe, to categorise what he felt for her. Was it possible at all? To be in love with someone’s mind, to be so completely taken in by a person, to be in awe, to want and need a part of a person; was this possible? To want her, not as a girlfriend or any of those clearly defined relationships with clearly defined ways to be. But to just want her? And let her be what she wanted to? She pinged, her next message said…
The Message,2007
Rejected

Quoting lines from my books, I can see how the simple titles may have been a problem to the publishers. I would’ve worked on them, changed them completely, all I needed was an acceptance letter, really. Looking back, I don’t have regrets. I poured my life into what I wrote and now I have nothing more to give to them. To you, I have nothing to give either but I know that you don’t want me to. I know I have succeeded in making you feel. I know I will stay on with you. That’s all I really want.

‘I love you. It is in you that I find comfort. Are any more words necessary?’
Unfinished,2002
Rejected


From The Suicide Note of a Hardly Published Author,2012
Tejas Ray,1979-2011
ABC Random House, Delhi
Winner of Indian Man Booker,2013
Featured Book for Jaipur Literature Festival,2014

The Suicide Note

My writing has always been liberally laced with irony; a consciously developed style thinking it would put me in the league of Post Modernist Indian authors like Ghosh,Adiga and Kaul. Admitted, I was trying to lead the reviewers of my books right where I wanted them. Ive admired these works, I live for anything in the written form and well, as destiny has it, ironically, Im dying for it too.

This is my suicide note.

I, Tejas Ray declare that no one except my own failure is responsible for this.
I,Tejas Ray am and will remain a hardly published author after more rejected manuscripts than I care to count.
and I, Tejas Ray cannot go on living the two lives I live; one of a software professional with my entire existence bound between 0 and 1 and the second of a writer, where the letters between A and Z serve as my purpose and as my passion. And so I have decided to end both.

She lived her life as if in a dream. Probably she’d describe it as Wonderland. And Alice she was, tumbling through life, starting a conversation with anything that life brought her way. Conversations of a sparkling quality, a sparkle that glinted in the mischief of her eye and in her shy smile. So Alice she was and her world, Wonderland.
Down the rabbit hole,1999
ABC Random House, Delhi

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
About the bigger ,almost always useless questions; Isnt Art more for oneself than money or audience? Aren’t artists used to rejection of their Art? Is a rejection of Art even possible; given that it is so personal and no one can possibly pass a judgement on it?
Let me tell you a story. I do this hoping someone would read this note.
Oscar Wilde spoke of the difference between living and existing. And I can only seem to live by my
words. My only published work was much appreciated, the offers to advance book manuscripts came in and I was even pursued to write the biography of a yesteryear B grade actress. Ha! She wanted to liken her mental state to my Alice; make it romantic and mysterious. Charming lady she was, but as much as I liked her, hers was a sad life and I was just starting out. Never had I thought that mine would turn out sadder than hers. I’d give an arm to be commissioned to write the biography of a cat now.
Yes I couldn’t handle rejection. Never have been able to. Changed schools after failing 11th grade. Changed cities because Calcutta didn’t give me the chance I thought it owed me. Changed my mind about love after every two years. Know that when you throw the note after reading it, I’ll take it as rejection. But its not like I’ll be able to do anything then. The term morbid sense of humor has taken on new meaning.

Ek pyaar ka nagma hai,maujon ki rawani hai
Zindagi aur kuch bhi nahi
Teri Meri kahani hai
They held each other close and swayed to the music. In the movies, theyd show this scene with dimmed lights and lit candles. Choreographed dance. In the real world, they moved side to side, no one would call this dance. His files lay strewn on the sofa, her laptop flashed a low battery sign. The light was too bright, they were dressed in trackpants. The moment was perfect..
The Song
Book of Modern Short Stories,2000
Rejected

I could console myself saying that the world wasn’t ready for me or that I should try till I succeed. I could find a reason to live in the person that I love. Except that I haven’t loved. I’ll love that person who reads my writing. I’ll love that person in whose mind my words evoke images. I’ll love that person with a passion who connects to my writing. That person connects with me.

The way you hold the sheets
The way your eyes go over a line again to
make sure of what they mean
The way you feel is a way you’d never thought you’d feel
Is it possible, this love?...
Unfinished,2002
Rejected

Strangely, I had written this a decade ago when I was toying with a new concept. Had never imagined these words would ring true in the last hours of my life. Is it really possible to be feeling a connection with you? I can imagine you sitting there, reading my words, them impacting you and then days later, over a cup of tea or a song with that sad melancholy tune, my words come back to you and you know that you can never disconnect yourself from what you have read; from what I have bared of my soul. Yes, I have bared my soul to you and I see yours too. In the crease between your brows as you try to understand me, in the way you pause between reading the lines and take in what I mean, in the way you silently answer my rhetoric questions; I see your soul and it’s a beautiful one.

..I have bared my soul to you .”
The sculptor looked up. This was probably the first time he really saw her. He heard her story in the pain in her voice. He saw before him a woman with a perfect posture, undaunted, proud yet vulnerable. As he looked at the naked sitter, she became more than that. She became a story which he must relate, the honesty of which he must preserve. He didn’t reply to her and looked down on his work, deciding to rework the deep gash on her left arm.
The Victims of Violence Series was going to be more demanding of him than he had initially thought.
The Sculpture
Book of Modern Short Stories,2000
Rejected


In my final moments, it seems like the world is a whole new place. I had never imagined it would turn out this way. I can say that I am in love with you. And I know you are in love with me too. Love is defined too rigidly in our heads, we take it as holding hands and being intimate. But what of how the heart feels? What of the intimacy I feel with you? Intimacy and Love. Big words like these shouldn’t be restricted to the small definitions we give them. I have come to feel an intimacy with you and I don’t want you to seek an explanation for this. Let it remain, let Romance be bigger than Logic, for once. Let me be. Let us be.

Love as boy and girl, holding hands is how we think of it or we have grandiose Romeo/Juliet -tragic ideas about it. Yes, love can be tragic. Love can be many things, that is the wonderful thing about as big a word as love. Along with the many things that love itself can be; happy, romantic, tragic; love is also found in the strangest of places. The inexplicable way in which you are drawn to someone or the love an artist has for his Art, more so, his audience. Love is a strong emotion and that is all that can be said definitely about it. Short lived interest in people, or a painter’s hubris isn’t love. Love is grand. Its in my connection to you, grand and inexplicable. Wonderful. Like the intimacy a woman feels with a man as she bends over the offered flame to light her cigarette, like the nakedness a photographer would feel in his own gallery as people viewed his photographs and so viewed a part of him, like the euphoria a stimulating conversation generates; ours is a connection of intimacy, vulnerability and nakedness and euphoria; one I choose to call Love. Let that be.

Love surprises us.
…He replied ‘hahaha’ to one of her jokes and waited for that beautiful mind to work in the way that it. He couldn’t help but want to describe, to categorise what he felt for her. Was it possible at all? To be in love with someone’s mind, to be so completely taken in by a person, to be in awe, to want and need a part of a person; was this possible? To want her, not as a girlfriend or any of those clearly defined relationships with clearly defined ways to be. But to just want her? And let her be what she wanted to? She pinged, her next message said…
The Message,2007
Rejected

Quoting lines from my books, I can see how the simple titles may have been a problem to the publishers. I would’ve worked on them, changed them completely, all I needed was an acceptance letter, really. Looking back, I don’t have regrets. I poured my life into what I wrote and now I have nothing more to give to them. To you, I have nothing to give either but I know that you don’t want me to. I know I have succeeded in making you feel. I know I will stay on with you. That’s all I really want.

‘I love you. It is in you that I find comfort. Are any more words necessary?’
Unfinished,2002
Rejected


From The Suicide Note of a Hardly Published Author,2012
Tejas Ray,1979-2011
ABC Random House, Delhi
Winner of Indian Man Booker,2013
Featured Book for Jaipur Literature Festival,2014