Coke Tales
The arrest and interrogation of a peddler in Delhi reveal that at glitzy parties in faraway farmhouses, money and power go on high with the kick of cocaine. It's the haute drug for the stylish people in black. A peep into the world of the cocaine-users.

Invisible Dialogue
Vajpayee has promised a solution by March next year. But who is he talking to? Nobody knows.

Gunning For Arun
Jaswant Singh's special adviser is again at the centre of a controversy. This one though is not of his own making.

New Metro Hotspots
Establishments combining a rash of activities have taken over from the one-dimensional discos in urban India.

CONTROVERSY: PLAGIARISM

Novel Ideas

Two literary stars of Malayalam stand accused of plagiarism. Or, is envy the motive?

	"I don't remember reading Nirmal Verma's story though we are friends." M.T. Vasudevan Nair

Beware. Literary detectives are on the prowl. This time, caught under their magnifying glasses are Malayalam's two literary stars-M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Jnanpith Award winner, filmmaker, scriptwriter and popular icon; and Paul Zacharia, master short-story writer, columnist and literary gadfly. They have been accused of plagiarism by relatively unknown critics. And this comes close on the heels of a similar allegation against another prominent novelist, Perumpadavom Sreedharan, whose novel, Oru Sangeerthanam Pole (Like a Psalm), has created publishing history in Malayalam by selling a record 50,000 copies in six years.

Nair's 1964 novel Manju (Mist) is on trial four decades after its publication for allegedly being similar to a Hindi story Parinde (Birds, 1956), by fellow Jnanpith winner Nirmal Verma. And Zacharia's recent novella Enthundu Vishesham Pilathose?(How is life, Pilate?), whose English translation was recently brought out by Katha, is reportedly "too much inspired" by a story written by the 19th century French writer Anatole France. Charges against these immensely popular writers, strangely, appeared in a weekly edited by another prominent novelist C. Radhakrishnan. Allegation against Sreedharan's novel, which is about the life and love of Fyodor Dostoevsky, was raised by critic V. Rajakrishnan who, interestingly, wrote the book's preface. According to Rajakrishnan, the novel is only a translation of Memoirs by Anna, the Russian master's wife.

"I wish I am proved wrong. But the similarities in theme, images, characters and even the physical setting are too striking to ignore," says K.V. Thomas, a Malayalam professor who has dared to take on MT (that is Vasudevan Nair for Malayalees). Thomas rolls out the similarities-the theme of loneliness and waiting; the lonely protagonists, Verma's Latika and MT's Vimala, who are both schoolteachers living in the agonising memories of their failed love affairs; the snow-clad Nainital as backdrop in both novels; and the recurring motifs of mist, mountains and frozen time...

MT is not bothered. "I don't remember having ever read Verma's story although we are very close friends. I wrote Manju immediately after I returned from a visit to Nainital," he told india today. And MT's best defence now has come from Verma himself who says it is ridiculous to accuse an author of MT's calibre of plagiarism. "My story's English translation was published only five or six years ago by HarperCollins. I don't think MT reads Hindi works in original. So there is no substance to the charge that MT had read it before he wrote his novel," says Verma.

The charge against Zacharia is that his work is too indebted to The Procurator of Judea. Both books are based on the internal life of Pontius Pilate, the Biblical judge. "The brilliant writer that he is, Zacharia has deftly re-ordered the French story and created another brilliant work. But he should have given credit to the original," says Isaac Eapen, a short-story writer who has made the "exposure". Zacharia says he isn't morally or legally obliged to respond to the charges. "If someone comes across similarities it should lead to a literary exploration to know how they appear in two works by different authors so divided by time and space. It shouldn't start with accusations of plagiarism, which amounts to voyeurism and cheap gossip," says Zacharia, who is now busy giving final touches to his latest novel on Nathuram Godse, This is My Name.

Sreedharan says he was stunned to be called a plagiarist by the person who wrote a preface to his novel about the mental and physical trauma Dostoevsky went through in the 26 days that took him to write The Gambler. "It was sheer envy. Rajakrishnan came out with the accusation only after it won more than five awards and sold 50,000 copies," says Sreedharan. "Most important, I have clearly given credit in my book to Anna Dostoevsky's work as my source of inspiration." But Rajakrishnan is unforgiving. "I wrote the preface before seeing Anna Dostoevsky's Memoirs. Only after I read it did I realise Sreedharan's novel was only a rehash or translation of Anna's Memoirs."

—M.G. Radhakrishnan

MetroScape

Looking Glass

Delhi Restaurant:
Kootub Restaurant

Delhi Dance Festival: Abhinaya Sudha

Delhi Restro-bar:
Buzz, Get It Here

Bangalore Exhibitions: Cinnamon