How Kavya got charmed, got wooly and got the boos

Kavya Viswanathan's seems to be a plain case of a plagiarist trying to strike it big. But there is more than meets a wary eye.

Book writing and publishing, apart from being an exercise in creativity and intellect, is also a lucrative business proposition. Like any other business proposition in America, it has been put through the scanner by scores of entrepreneurs to look for hidden udders that can deliver the ever elusive extra moolah. As an innovative result of these efforts, a third layer (apart from writers and publishers) has taken birth, got organized and mature. This layer is the interface (read middlemen) between the writers and publishers. These agents get the material mostly from relatively unknown, first-time writers. If they find some promising stuff (read potential money-spinner) they turn it over to the publishers. All for a fee of course.

The system works fine unless some smartass editor employed by an interface company decides to over-exert herself, as happened in Kavya's case. The same interface firm that Kavya employed had also reprented the author who was the victim of the plagiarism effort. The coincidence doesn't stop here. The same person edited both the books. The rest can be read between the lines.

Can you blame a starry eyed youngster if her editor borrows some passage from the works of an obscure author that she happened to edit before? But it seems there aren't enough admirers of dusky beauties in the land of whites. Enquiries started, a media churning followed and Kavya got damned. Irrespective of the book's worth, as a result of this "unintentional internalisation" Kavya can at least be credited for one of the most creative euphemisms in the English language.