We all know how Opal Mehta got kissed got wild and got a life, thanks to the much hyped charges of plagiarism against Opal’s creator, Kaavya Viswanathan. Megan McCafferty is also in the spotlight thanks to the fact that she was the unfortunate ( or rather fortunate) source of Kaavya’s extractions. As of now, Opal’s coming of age story has ceased to crowd the bookshelves in response to the legal orders sanctioning them to be off the shelf as soon as possible. And as for Kaavya creating history, being the youngest untested author to grab a major two book half a million dollar contract, well, its time to bid goodbye to the moolah and welcome the media frenzy enveloping her. In fact, she couldn’t have had it better. When the news about her plagiarism erupted, the sales of her chick-lit flick increased exponentially with nonchalant young adults rushing to bookstores to grab their copies of Opal’s life.

Is it a sinister coincidence or a twist of fate? Kaavya’s own story isn’t unlike her heroine Opal. Opal Mehta a second generation Indian can go to any lengths to get into her dream university Harvard, driven by her equally hyper parents. Her life takes a major turn when the Dean of Admissions at Harvard asks her the simple question, “ What do you do for fun?” And our darling Opal has no answer to that. And hence starts her quest of getting a life. Plans are chalked up, schedules are drawn all n preparation of Opals big adventure of getting a life. She becomes popular, beautiful and the envy of every young girl. In other words, she becomes the shining example of every thing she’s not. And then the inevitable happens. Her fake identity is discovered. And all her fame gets transformed to infamy. The story is not unlike Kaavya’s. Her book scaling best seller lists, she reaching near celebrity status, she being compared to established experts of teenage stories like Meg Cabot, Megan McCafferty, only to return to the place where se started off form except, this time with less honour. Strange isn’t it? The resemblance is almost uncanny.

Kaavya justified herself saying that her copying was unintentional. She confessed that she was a big fan of Miss McCafferty’s books and any resemblance was completely unintentionally done. While most people shun the apology as a lame excuse, others agree with her statement saying that it is possible to unintentionally and unconsciously forge someone else’s work and pass it off as our own.

After all there are archives full of historical anecdotes of otherwise virtuous people who apparently plagiarised inadvertently from Helen Keller to Sigmund Freud to the Beatles singer George Harrison. And in recent years Psychology researchers have begun to experiment wit the phenomenon of unconscious plagiarism which they call cryptomnesia.

Infact, plagiarism has become a global phenomenon. How many of us teens can emphatically claimed that they have never ‘ borrowed’ passages from the internet for school projects quite consciously and intentionally? At least I cant say so.