When Editors gave writers virtual slips! Sweeping with a broom!

Regret slips

by Rajbir Deswal

THOSE were the days when one received a cheque as remuneration for a published piece along with a clipping of it. But there were infamous regret slips too. A kind of good gesture from the editors for your creative effort was also the token of their advice and intention to tone up and try again.
Their “acknowledgement” was generally taken by you a little shyly in right earnest, but most of the times with a pinch of salt, for it did pinch you a bit and almost rubbed salt into your injured self (acquired) respect!
Before the advent of the system of sending messages by email or through the fax and telex machines, the regret slips were sent unlike these days, when you keep guessing for the fate of your “creation”.
They gave a mixed feeling of grief and joy to me. Grief, for my piece was declared “killed”, and joy, for it came with an acknowledgement from none other than the editor himself. And, generally, as the masthead impression of that particular newspaper was there on the regret slip, it gave an enhanced joy of receiving something from an august office.
At least your name was there on the envelope, and you could boast that it had a cheque in it, if not a clipping of your printed piece with your byline. No one would know the reality of the receipt of a disheartening and disquieting regret slip.
But the regret slip got the pride of place in at least my scheme of things. I gazed at it with adulation, for here was proof that my piece had been at least touched by the editor himself, the (str)etched out impression of his blue or red pencil notwithstanding. I held all the regret slips as the most sacrosanct documents, almost like Bhoj-Patras — holy leaves of an epic.
I have known nobler souls who acquired and boasted of the collections of regret slips. They kept telling others about their “passion” for writing, but they never mentioned what they felt when “heartless” editors ruthlessly cleared their files of articles, unmindful of the writers’ emotions.
I could make out from the way the regret slip was either pinned or stapled or even folded with my “failed missile” if at all it got the desired treatment. In that case, I would send it to some other newspaper, and sometimes this led to the write-up appearing in the paper’s columns, giving me a thrill of sorts.
Once in a while I felt like getting mad when I received my articles back — which had the editor’s punches marked here and there in the first and second paragraphs — with a big ‘R’ scribbled in a corner and rounded off, trying to make me realise that it was a piece beyond repair.
This kind of a slip plus the rejected piece always haunted me if I chose to preserve them, which I did, but with a feeling that “I was a gone case — will never grow to become a writer like so and so!”
All said and done, the regret slips were good indicators that you were not getting cheques, not too soon. Or never!