• What ya?!

    Thats my sister’s lingo :), and i bet if she knew Ms Vishwanathan, she would have said exactly that ‘What ya Kaavya?!’…. but yes, $500,000 is a lot of money… and while the blog community can make jokes on ‘How Kaavya Vishwanathan got rich, got famous and got ruined’, and we can all pontificate on the evils of plagiarism, we should maybe spare a thought on how a 19 year old’s mind works.. coz we have all been there, and its most definitely a different world indeed…
    For once, ToI (last Sunday) has done a good job in a purely journalistic sense, and given the story a coverage from different angles.. it acknowledges that a person of the calibre of amitav ghosh (who was her faculty in Harvard) feels that Kaavya did have a lot of talent, and the fact that everyone from william Shakespeare downwards have been doing a lil bit of copy paste job here and there.. and also the fact that the editor of both the authors (the one who copied and the one who was copied from) is a common factor…
    not that i am supporting plagiarism, but like the saying goes, its a crime only if you get caught…unfortunately Opal Mehta got a bit too famous and therefore ran a higher risk of getting caught..and Kaavya and the 40 thieved passages from one book and more from another book did get caught.. the world has changed since Shakespeare’s time, and information is too easily available for something of this sort to go unnoticed…Hopefully, she will get a life after this, and can pick up enough of the broken pieces to start afresh… for its a huge burden to carry, and theres still a long way to go…
    until next time, such is the prize of fame and the price of fame…

  • The price of fear

    1989… Rs.15… Bees Saal Baad
    2006… Rs.170… Darna Zaroori Hain

    until next time, there’s a reason to be afraid

  • Ash’s to ashes

    and dust to dust.. thats how ash’s relationships seem to be going…. and the latest reason sounds like the title song of Aamir’s mutiny movie… funny that both the relationship and the movie sank without a trace… nope, it isnt a connection for the sake of a pun…:)
    wonder how many of you remember ‘Hi, I am Sanjana’.. that was the first time i remember Ash on Tv… it was a much awaited ad from pepsi, featuring the nation’s then chocolate hero, Aamir Khan and a relatively less known Ash.. and thats around the time i convinced a certain ‘Cool Drinks’ shop owner that the pepsi poster featuring Ash would look much better on my wall than in his store… and then came the beauty contests, and the movies, and Ash went from looking hot in cold drink ads to looking cold even in hot scenes.. cant actually think of any exact time when the transformation happened, but yes, do remember the huge black and white poster bought in Chennai to celebrate the 12th Board results, for a princely sum of Rs.50 🙂
    There have been many men in her life after that 😉 – Salman Khan, Vivek Oberoi, with the latest being Bachchan’s bachcha… and while Ash has been wearing whole range of hats from a modelto a Miss World to a Bollywood Diva, i have completed a hat trick too, a hattrick, for April 29 marks the end of the third year of blogging…
    until next time, for a mistress of spices, variety can only be another spice in life 🙂

  • Reel…

    That was exactly what Bangalore did in reaction to the death of Dr Rajkumar… no, correction,that was what it was made to do… in a city where less than 50% of the population is not native of the state, it is difficult to imagine that the death actually made the entire city mourn… rather, it was fear that made the city come to a halt…a halt which almost got the bachelor population go hungry for a day, which forced all forms of entertainment to be out of access – that included all the shops, malls, theatres and the staple cable TV!!…
    and which all but killed the long anticipated weekend.. although most parts of the city was peaceful there was an ‘anything could happen’ air about, which hampered the regular functioning of the city.. and after the scenes aired on the news channels (which weremercifully spared from the entertainment ban), not many people would have wanted to open their shops for the few people who might actually dare to venture out…
    two millenia after Jesus died, when his followers make up the largest religion in the world,i wonder what would happen if the same logic were to be adopted by his followers every Good Friday.. Perhaps its because of the knowledge that He would be back on a later day, and that,i guess, is the difference between a god and a demigod.
    until next time, end of reel
    (yup, delayed by almost a fortnight, but am almost settled, so from now i should be on normal mode)

  • OK Dada Bye bye

    and that was a stupendous performance against england and pakistan.. and the politics of the BCCI notwithstanding, it could very well be the end of one Saurav Ganguly.. for perhaps only the second time in his life, Ganguly is now the underdog, and the favourite to seal the matter is none other than the chap from down under, whose candidacy (ironically) Ganguly himself had vociferously supported …it has been a see-saw battle, which started even under Ganguly’s reign… Ganguly’s tirade against Chappell, the leaked e-mail and Chappell’s stoic silence..
    Unfortunately Ganguly spoke when his bat should have done the talking, and perhaps Chappell was indeed betting on that not happening.. and while everything else worked for Ganguly – selectors, crowds, commentators, one thing was conspicuous by its absence – the batting form that had made him the captain of India… and its persisting absence then made everything else stop working, and Ganguly was out… Chappell gave in to pressure and brought him back into the team… and still betted on his batting not working.. he was right again…
    who knows what might have happened if dravid had not shielded Ganguly in pakistan and opened the batting.. because all said and done, ganguly possesses one other thing than his batting skill, that might have saved the day for him – a champion’s heart.. he might have ducked the bouncers, fished outside the off stump, given a fewchances, displayed a technique with a million flaws, and at the end of it all made a century…thats exactly what sachin had done to his critics, slapped them in the face with a century…
    I am by no means a Ganguly fan, but the bottom line was that he had transformed Indian cricket,made India win matches, supported a young bunch of talent and in the process, made himself a persona which aspiring youngsters could look up to..he showed what India was capable of.. maybe for selfish reasons, maybe not… It is ironical, that just when it was time for Boycott’s (and Kolkata’s) prince to become king, he was dethroned..
    until next time, up against a wall