HOW KAAVYA VISHWANATH GOT RICH, GOT CAUGHT AND GOT RUINED...

Kaavya Vishwanathan, the Chennai born Harvard Sophomore whose first book deal was estimated to be worth a whopping half million dollars wallows in the mire of a plagiarism scandal, finding herself disgraced and left to face the ignominy of what she has done. This riches to rags story has been dominating the pages of the newspapers for the past few days, although whether so much attention has been paid to it because she is Indian, she is so young, or because of her mega bucks deal..While that is left completely to personal opinion, it wouldnt be such an inappropriate time to ask ourselves, are we really that surprised at this? After all, she carries with her the indian legacy, the only prerequisite to making movies is owning a dvd player.. Where movies are remade with amazing audacity and chutzpah, where music copyrights are infringed with horrendous regularity, where perople dont have the courtesy to delve into the treasure trove of literature at their disposal..Where a person lifts music from every conceivable band but when a foreign group tries to use a sample of his song, he sues their pants off. Inspite of being from such a land, where originality has been out of fashion since time immemorial, she has gone ahead, written a book, used her unmistakably indian instinct and landed up in the most unenviable of situations. The hullabaloo that is being made out of this supposed plagiarism, one would not be mistaken if he thinks the whole book has been lifted. All this for what forms a bare chunk of the literature.

Is it fair to let people off for copying movies and songs but drag others down for similarities between parts of their book and another??