Kavyaed

Let me state beforehand that this passage is not Kavyaed. I guess that term hasn't yet come into English, but don't worry, very soon it is going to be. All the readers of this blog are going to be at an advantage because you can always claim that you read this word first at this blog. This word would mean creating (mainly writing) something which bears a close resemblance to another average (or even below average) creation without trying to mask the original in any significant manner. For example, 80% of Bollywood movies could be termed as Kavyaed. The other 15% are copies of reasonably good films whereas another 5% (and I know I'm grossly overestimating here) could (the operating word here is could) be termed as original.

The first time I Kavyaed was back in 8th standard. Come to think of it, it could very well have been Haried. I was very much into Louis Lamour, J.T. Edson, etc. I imagined myself as a kind of Dusty Fog (because of my own limited height) and hoped to strut around in jeans, stetson on head, stubble on the chin, burning cigarette on the lips. I started writing novels which all had a hero who looked like this. The problem in my case was primarily that I wasn't offered a six-figure contract or else I would have put in more effort. In any case, all of those novels never went beyond the first chapter. By the time I finished my 12th, I had completed Godfather at least 20 times. Now, I didn't want my hero to be any longer a cowboy. After all, who would want to be a penniless, dirty cowboy when you could be a sauve, rich mafia don. So, now my novels started having a distinct Italian flavor. But then again, you can imagine a writing which is depending 99.99% on Mario Puzo on everything related to mafia. Add to that the fact that I hadn't been outside Thrissur (a small town in a small state called Kerala) but was using my imagination to create imaginary countries with imaginary cities with imaginary streets, etc., and you can imagine how horrible the entire writing would have been. By the time I had finished my graduation, it slowly dawned on me that I didn't have it in me to even write a short story. Then I did dabble a bit in poetry which were, at best, passable before that too degenerated. I had forgotten all about writing when Kavya Vishwanathan appeared with her bag of goods. Now, she has awoken the plagiaristic juices in me. Look out for One Thousand Weeks of Being Alone by Hari Prabhakaran.