Many of you must have read about Kavya Vishwanathan... An expat Indian of Tamil origins in the US. Considered a very precocious teenager with a flair for writing, she bagged a contract with a US publishing company for USD 500,000 for her debut novel "How Opal Mehta Got kissed, Got wild and Got a life". The book falls into the genre Young Adult (read Mills and Boons type).
My first thought on reading about this was... Man, Indians are really going places!!! Sure Indians are considered great techies (we know the real truth don't we? :-) ) but we don't have much of a place under the literary sun. There was further fodder for my sub-nationalism as this girl was a "Tamil Ponnu".
Reading further about her I came to know that she had made it to Harvard. Now I was really impressed!!! Then came the interesting twist... When questioned whether she would pursue a literary career, pat came the reply, "Nah!! I wanna pursue my Harvard degree...". Immediately the Sherlock Holmes in me smelled something fishy (I can already hear some of you sneering "Dei... Kathai vidathey da...") :). Alright... alright... my first real thoughts were, "Man this girl is crazy. She is walking away from the prospects of making more money" but then I remembered that she was from Harvard. I concluded that Harvard guys must be like our IITs and IIMs, who blaze through courses and end up starting political parties and starting "Idly Kadais".
Well it turns out that the girl had pilfered (an anti-euphemism for plagiarized) from a book written in 2001. I think this was her way to earn her College Tuition fees. Some have their Million Dollar Homepage to pay through college while others have their Red Paper Clip to buy a house, well our girl Kavya takes the "write a plagiarized book" route which I think that may be a reason why she refused to consider writing another book again.
Finally, I have bumped upon a get rich quick scheme too. I have decided to write a book "How Krish Wrote a Short Story(?), Got screwed, Got scared, and tore down the post". The book falls under the genre Totally Adult. Any takers? :)
2 comments:
Hahaha! Your book sounds totally awesome! May I have a complimentary copy for review purposes please? :)
One hot copy straight, personally autographed by me, from the presses has been mailed to you as I write this comment :)
Don't compare it with works of Jeffry Archer, Mario Puzo, Stephen King though...
I shall be "internalizing" from their works...
Yes... that was exactly the term used by Kavya when asked about the uncanny similarities between the two books. :)
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