I got to know recently that another article of mine has been published...the circumstances were so bizarre that rather than feeling elated on knowing that my article was published, I was embarassed and had to coduct a major fire fighting operation...
I had submitted this article to one of the oldest and most respected literary journals in India one year ago...It was my college dream to one day have at least one article published in this journal...anyway, they were supposed to intimate the acceptance or otherwise of my article within 3-4 weeks...I did not get any response during the next 4 weeks...as September/October is the festival season here, I thought people were busy and I waited...I waited for 3 months and then wrote an e-mail to the editor...no response...then I wondered whether the editor opens his e-mails ever...I waited...patiently...3 months later, I wrote a letter and sent it along with a self addressed and stamped envelope, so that it would be convenient for them to send a reply...no response...I waited...it was nearing one year...I then felt that either they were not interested in the article or my article did not reach them at all...so I decided to send the article to another journal...as is my usual procedure, I first wrote to the editor about my article to find out whether they'd be interested in considering it for publication...they asked me to send it...I sent the article...I felt I had done a fairly good job with the article, but reviewers might want some changes...so, I hoped that the final outcome would be good...
Two days later I receive a mail from the consulting editor of this journal informing me that the article that I had submitted has already been published by the earlier journal and that they (the second journal) would not be considering it for their journal...the consulting editor congratulated me for this...I was stunned and surprised...I did not whether to laugh or to cry...nothing makes an academic happier than to see his/her work in print in a journal...but here my credibility was at stake...the people in the second journal would feel that I was trying to palm off an article already published by another journal...I wrote an explanatory mail apologizing profusely for this unintended fiasco...I told them the whole story, how I did not get any response from the earlier journal and at the end of one year, I had to assume that it wouldn't be published and then decided to send it to the their journal...I don't know whether they were convinced, as I did not receive any reply from them...
But the funnier part is I don't have a copy of the issue of the journal in which this article is published...I asked my brother to help me and he sent one of his acquaintances to this place to purchase a copy...the people there told him that they don't sell individual issues and one has to be a subscriber to get a copy...I was at a deep end now...I then approached a senior academic in the same city whom I know and narrated him the whole story and requested him to help me out...he then wrote back informing me that he knew the editor of the journal and would arrange to send a copy to me...
I haven't received the copy yet...am still waiting...
Sometimes life surprises you...when you don't know how to react...
Jayasrinivasa Rao
