As they say ‘curiosity kills the cat’ and that’s what happened with em also. I finally picked up a copy of Kaavya Vishwanathan’s plagiarized book ‘How Opal Mehta Got kissed…’. i just finished reading the book and thought it was quite a cliche.

The book deals with how Opal the main character ends up being a nerd in her quest to end up in Harvard. How she gets a life ’supposedly’ is what the book deals with.  What I found interesting, was parallels with the fictional character ‘Opal’ and the real Kaavya. Opal had to face criticisms and jokes at her expense because she devised strategies to actually get kissed, get drunk!

When Kaavya’s plagiarism was discovered, it was a huge embarrassment for her. Being part of such a reputable institution it would have been really tough for her to continue with her daily affairs.

In fact the very news about her plagiarism was broken in the ‘Harvard Crimson’ paper. Similarly, in the book Opal’s plans to kiss, drink, throw parties were revealed in an email to the whole college. The email was sent by one of her group mates.

As they say life can be an irony at times.

Around last year Kavya Vishwanathan’s book ‘ How Opal Mehta got kised…..’ was pulled out from bookshelves across the world by its publisher Little Brown. With it has been reported that her film deal with Dreamworks has also fell apart.

its really sad that Kavya had to resort to copying. Shes a Harvard student and more importantly it was the Harvard journal which reported instances of Kavya’s copying.

plagiarism has become so common. it leads to the debate among people whether anything original exists in the world.

Kavya copied from Megan McAfferty’s book ’sloppy firsts.’ Kavya copied almost 40 passages from Megan’s book. as if copying from one book was not enough she copied from two other books. Kavya defended the plagiarism allegation stating that she dint do it intentionally, she just happened to ‘internalize it.’ {yaa & u expect us to believe it.

All this just goes to prove the huge pressure on authors today to create a best seller with their every attempt at writing. Kavya’s book has been termed as ‘chiklit.’ one thing to note is that both kavya & Megan’s book was part of a publishing group ‘Alloy.’

Alloy is responsible for the marketing of the books or ‘book packaging.’ book packaging gives rise to the creation of ‘ghost writers.’ the marketing agents themselves write passages in the book on behalf of the author.

its really sad Kavya had to resort to such copying. it just goes to show that marketing concerns have a huge say in the way the book is shaping.

so in future kavya will think hundred times before writing a book, it also serves as a lesson for other budding writers.

But Kavya can still find solace in the fact that her book sells like hot cakes still in Mumbai’s streets in the pirated book markets. Ironically it’s just difficult to find a copy of her book largely because of the popularity.

As they say controversy does make business sometimes, in this case for the pirated book-sellers!