In Defence of Kaavya - How Opal Mehta Got into Controversy

Deeply saddened, is what I could muster up for what has happened to Kaavya Vishwanathan's Literary Career...The fledgling career has been faced with rough weather...It all happened like a hazy dream...She shot up to fame first with her novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got A Life, then soon after, not even a month into her popularity, she was stripped of all her popularity...the reasons given were, some paragraphs of her work had striking resemblance, hard to ignore from another popular writer's couple of novels. People started publishing similarities as if that was their favourite past time of late....

Agreed plagiarism is not a very kind act....one needs to be very vigilant on acts like these...but please spare a thought to what kaavya should be going through, because it has become very evident that it was pressure from the publishing and packaging house that has had a major say in the released version of the book, but all said and done, it is the author who is targeted for all of the remarks...fair enough....but at the behest of the background activities, the question that is becoming conspicous is "Is Kaavya really responsible for all that happened ??"

I have read a lot on the online stories after the controversy and these seem to outnumber the lines written by kaavya in the book....surprising isn't it??? yeah but thats the truth....amongst the heap of stories that I have read on PLAGIARIST - KAAVYA, I could spot out three interesting stories IN DEFENCE OF KAAVYA... and I do second...rather fourth these articles....and Kaavya, I stand by your side, I feel after all noobody is original and can be original as a matter of fact of nature.....

1)IN DEFENCE OF KAAVYA - http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003068.html
2)IN DEFENCE OF KAAVYA - http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/may/08guest.htm
3)IN DEFENCE OF KAAVYA - http://www.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?cid=48893

Spot me a person who can vouch for originality in thought, word and action, in any work of theirs....IT SHOULD HAVE HAD AN INSPIRATION FROM SOMEWHERE....there is no escaping that....just that the source does not complain about Plagiarism

As one of the links say, the so-called copied content, doesn't in any way

a) affect the original work
b) amount to even 1 % of the derived work, which automatically means the copied content is an insignificant part....
c) Does not create any twists to the plot of the story, which has affected the story significantly...


so why make all the fuss about lifting lines, from another work.....as the second link states, Kaavya has not been skillfull at copying...had she been, she would not be into this situation now.....

I am certainly not of the opinion that plagiarism is acceptable and should not be condemned..but all that I am lamenting over here is one should not be prejudiced to cases of plagiarism.....the cases should be opinionated on an individual basis, if any body with their senses ON, reads the whole book of Kaavya and gets to the paragraphs in question....they would readily agreee "SO WHAT????", believe me, these paragraphs are that insignificant and the pity is Kaavya has had to pay the price of the two-book-deal being scraped and her novel revoked from book stores....

So I feel one should support this girl during this time of distress....and emotional block-out.......

my 2 cents.....