Last few days have seen authors courting controversy as the old demon of plagiarism has again turned its head. First it was Dan Brown whose book ‘DaVinci Code’ once again made headline, this time though reason was a bit unenviable. Readers practically gorged on this thriller and copies were sold like hot cakes.
Then came the rude shock as two authors claimed Brown’s lifting their plot. I am not a great fan of Mr. Brown’s writing style but it seems he does quite research on his subject, so as this plot thickened; I pursued it with much interest. Unlike Brown’s books which have so many twists, this real life plot was shorn of any climax. Brown was reprieved, authors cringed and filmmakers of celebrated novel heaved a sigh of relief.
So finally Tom Hanks can play Langdon and we can watch the movie version of novel and end up arguing with our friends on how movies generally don’t live up to expectations created by celebrated novels.
But teenaged Harvard hopper Kaavya seems to be less fortunate. After making a big killing( a record offer for a teenaged writer 5 lakh dollars for the fledgling writer to be accurate), she made another screaming headline. We felt Plagiarism has been buried but that was not the case. Lady ran into trouble as certain Jennifer(don’t know her surname nor want to know some editor of cosmopolitan) claimed and convinced that Kaavya has lifted many a passage from her book. Yeah, passages were disturbingly similar. So unlike her protagonist Opal poor Kaavya hasn’t got a life, she is embroiled in this ugly controversy at very outset of a budding career . Let’s see how many more such big names are there to crumble and who knows with active readers and hyper active media, soon our dear Austens and Shakespeares may be plagued by doubts of plagiarism.
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