Blood in the water

Everyone seems to have a take on the Nikhat Kazmi plagiarism incident, so I thought Id add my own two paise. Why is everyone so surprised by the Nikhat Kazmi incident? Over the last few years we’ve been looking at the foreign-movie reviews that appear weekly in our major (and minor) papers and we’ve never been under the impression that it’s anything but “inspired” writing. The big surprise in the latest incident isn’t that the plagiarism occurred — it’s been happening for years, and in all the newspapers, though, often in neatly disguised form. The real surprise is that a high-profile critic in the country’s leading newspaper was silly enough to lift whole passages without changing anything, thus making it easy for herself to get caught.

In case the last paragraph looked familiar, its because its plagiarised…from jabberwock, beamish boy jai arjun singhs website. And to make my plagiarism of his views on plagiarism even more plagiaristic, Im not going to link to his blog.

(Its in the sidebar, awright?)

the strangest things about the whole case are the following

1) Why Shark Tale? Its hardly difficult to understand

2) Why are the word changes so sloppy? The reconstructed sentences lose all meaning.

3) Has there been any response from the lady in question? In other words, did she plagiarize it herself, or was this the work of some intern who didnt know better?4

4) Why havent you sent me all your money yet?

5) Does the same thing happen in book reviews? Does anyone READ book reviews in the first place? Apart from the twenty-odd people who write them? I know people in my office used to read the reviews I wrote…but did anyone else?

I notice you arent paying much attention to 4). Ah well. it was worth a shot.

Congratulations, Jai. Dont ever read the reviews of your film, when you make it.