'A Victim Of Her Ambition'

If you thought that with the withdrawal of the book by Little Brown, the wholebrouhaha over Kaavya Viswanathan's How Opal Mehta GotKissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life (HOMGKGWAGAL) would be over, you were mistaken. The controversy just refuses to die down.

The book continues to be under the scanner and it nowseems that the young Indian may have "internalised" also from Salman Rushdie’sHaroun and the Sea of Stories, Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries, andSophie Kinsella's Can You Keep a Secret? aswell in addition to Megan F. McCafferty's two books, SloppyFirsts and Second Helpings, which, as she had earlier pleaded,was "unintentional and unconscious".

What is significant is thatalmost all the new "revelations" seem to have been the results of closereaders posting their comments on various blogs and sharing their findings witheach others or mainstream media.

The similarities in passages with Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories (HATSOS) were brought out on the weblog Sepiamutiny.com where it was pointed outhow the passage in Rushdie's book where his hero, Haroun, enters a busdepot and passes by several admonitions written on the walls surrounding thedepot’s courtyard found its echoes in Viswanathan’s book where herprotagonist, Opal Mehta, helps another student place posters on a wall thatdiscourage drug and alcohol use.

On page 35 of Rushdie's HATSOS, one of the warnings reads: "If from speedyou get your thrill / take precaution—make your will."

On page 118 of Viswanathan’s HOMGKGWAGAL, oneof the posters reads: "If from drink you get your thrill, take precaution—writeyour will."

On page 31 of Rushdie's HATSOS, another warning reads: "All the dangerousovertakers / end up safe as undertaker’s".

On page 119 of Viswanathan’s HOMGKGWAGAL,another poster reads: "All the dangerous drug abusers end up safe as totallosers."

The similarities with Meg Cabot’s 2000 novel The Princess Diaries werereported on the comments section of the online journal DesiJournal which pointed out that page 12of Meg Cabot’s novel reads:

"There isn’t a single inch of me that hasn’t been pinched, cut, filed,painted, sloughed, blown dry, or moisturized. [...] Because I don’t look athing like Mia Thermopolis. Mia Thermopolis never had fingernails. MiaThermopolis never had blond highlights. Mia Thermopolis never wore makeup orGucci shoes or Chanel skirts or Christian Dior bras, which by the way don’teven come in 32A, which is my size. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Itcertainly isn’t Mia Thermopolis. She’s turning me into someone else."[Italics in the original]

And then followed the passage on page 59 of Viswanathan’s HOMGKGWAGALwhich reads:

"Every inch of me had been cut, filed, steamed, exfoliated, polished,painted, or moisturized. I didn’t look a thing like Opal Mehta. Opal Mehtadidn’t own five pairs of shoes so expensive they could have been traded in fora small sailboat. She didn’t wear makeup or Manolo Blahniks or Chanelsunglasses or Habitual jeans or Le Perla bras. She never owned enough cashmereto make her concerned for the future of the Kazakhstani mountain goatpopulation. I was turning into someone else."

Just as one tried to digest these bits of additionalinformation, New York Times was alerted to the similarities of at leastthree passages of HOMGKGWAGAL with Can You Keepa Secret? by Sophie Kinsella, which had spent six weeks on the New YorkTimes hardcover fiction best-seller list. The NYT went on to say that whilethe plots of the two books are distinct, "the phrasing and structure ofsome passages is nearly identical".

In Kinsella's book, the main character, Emma, comes upon two of her friends"in a full-scale argument about animal rights" and one of them says,"The mink like being made into coats". In Viswanathan's book,the heroine Opal comes upon two girls having "a full-fledged debate overanimal rights" and one of them says, "The foxes want to be made intoscarves".

In yet another scene, one of Kinsella's characters threatens another."And we'll tell everyone you got your Donna Karan coat from a discountwarehouse shop". In Viswanathan's version, the passage reads: "I'll tell everyone that in eighthgrade you used to wear a 'My Little Pony' sweatshirt to school every day."

Perhaps by now one is trying too hard to see similarities, but given thecontext, it is inevitable (Please see the pop-up on Page 1 which shows thepassages side by side, courtesy, the NYT). The NYT does take care to point out that thecopying here "does not seem" to be as extensive but adds, significantly:"Details and descriptions are also similar. Jack, the love interest in Ms.Kinsella's novel has a scar on his hand; so does Sean, the romantic hero inHOMGKGWAGAL. Jack has "eyes so dark they're almost black," so does Sean.

On CNN-IBN, Salman Rushdie meanwhiledescribedKaavya Viswanathan as "a victim of her own ambition". "I haven'tseen the book, I have seen the passages that were compared between the twobooks," he said. " I must say I don't accept the idea that this couldhave been accidentally or innocently done. The passages are too many and thesimilarities are too expensive."

He said he was sorry that "this young girl, pushedby the needs of a publishing machine and, no doubt, by her ambition, should havefallen into this trap so early in her career. I hope she can recover fromit."

Blaming both author and publisher for the mess, Rushdiesaid, "Both are responsible. But I know when I write a book it's my name onthe book so I stand or fall by what I sign. And so must she."