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Why Opal* didn’t get a life

A wag once remarked that we are the sum total of all the books we’ve
read, the places we’ve visited, the movies we’ve seen and the friends
we’ve made. That could prove to be a mighty dangerous situation,
what with disgraced Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan having
admitted to ‘internalizing’ generous portions of Megan F. McCafferty’s
books Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings—an admission that is going
to liberate a lot of skeletons from cupboards.

Even more worrisome are the implications, given the near-identical,

globalized – I’m getting a tad weary of this word – culture that’s
sweeping the planet. GenNext is well on the way to evolving into a
colony of copycat clones. For all I know, Ecclesiastes might be literally
true when it says that there’s nothing new under the sun, but that’s
probably apposite only against the backdrop of eternity. Earth is too
small a place in space-time to condone ‘internalizations’ of the Kaavya
variety on the strength of a cosmic truth alone.

Between you and me, such ‘internalizations’ have been around for
donkey’s years. As the old (and no longer funny) joke goes, when one
copies portions of a book or two, it’s called theft, but when material is
lifted from many books, its called research.

The whole process of copy-pasting doesn’t gel with me, since I fail to
understand how one could yield to the urge to write a book, and then
succumb to a sudden compulsion to ‘borrow’ what others have written.
It’s self contradictory. Surely we can – in order to do the almost
mandatory ‘literature review’ – paraphrase what others have so far
said on a particular subject, and then proceed to say what we’ve got to
say. That’s the very reason why we start to write a book in the first
place…isn’t it? Isn’t it…? I wonder why there’s this deafening silence.
Hullo? Anybody out there…?

I have come to the depressing conclusion that gone are the days,
generally speaking, when a scholar would immerse himself in his
subject for two or three decades. Then, his labours having ripened into
knowledge and perhaps wisdom, he would fulfil his prime purpose by
devotedly penning erudite commentaries, essays and full-length books.
Read with the standard textbooks, such valuable analyses would lead
to invaluable intellectual stimulation and set off a chain reaction of
further insights, critiques and yet more learned treatises.

* How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life Publisher: Little Brown
and Company
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Thus did knowledge progress in an unbroken chain from one

generation to another. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, for example, had
this amazing generational guru-shishya parampara or teacher–pupil
relationship, but each stood on the strength of his own merit in spite of
distinctive (and usually diametrically opposite) viewpoints. In other
words, the moment you make something sacrosanct, it ossifies, and
further progress is stymied.

Today, few of us care to challenge the established paradigm—

something a genuine teacher would give his eye-teeth for. It could be a
sign of cerebral stagnation: one of the reasons why we usually look to
the West for iconoclastic stimulation. Suitably legitimized by quoting
from imported examples of scholastic secession, native researchers
gleefully proceed to weave their indigenized versions around the
captive texts. This is indeed disappointing, because a true teacher is
unfulfilled if he fails to produce more teachers (just as leaders are said
to fail if they cannot produce more leaders).

Call it lack of sufficient incentive (by way of recognition or

remuneration); blame it on intellectual lethargy; dump the onus on
hectic teaching schedules that leave little time to ponder over
incongruous aspects of one’s subject; shift culpability to the prevailing
discount on creativity, or ascribe it to aversion to sticking one’s neck
out. The overall result is an appalling shortage of authors driven by an
original viewpoint or who have the ability to express themselves lucidly
—writers with the nerve and verve to give individualized expression to
their thoughts.

This is all the more surprising because as individuals, we are all as

unique and unrepeatable as snowflakes. What, then, prompts us to
abandon our native genius in favour of lifting from one another?
Childhood conditioning could be the reason why we prefer hackneyed
formulae, and have no problems with our conscience in hijacking film
or book themes from out West. As examples, I mention Rakesh
Roshan’s film Koi Mil Gaya, a reconditioned version of ET, the
Extraterrestrial, or even Gulzar’s Mausam―a cosmetically overhauled
(and gutted) plot lifted straight out of A.J. Cronin’s best-selling novel
The Judas Tree.
Is all this a disquieting indication that the educational system subtly
discourages originality and lateral thinking? Is it because the liberal
system of education – known to encourage free thinking, assimilation
of a wider spectrum of knowledge and internal processing thereof in
response to the dictates of one’s distinctive DNA – has fallen into
disfavour in these times of rigid specialization and industrial emphasis
on infallible repeatability?
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Could it be possible that Indian academia looks askance at those who

have a refreshingly original point of view? Are we so market driven
that we are compelled to sustain mediocrity?
There are disturbing indications that in the twilight zone where a
medley of thoughts are re-engineered into printed matter, East and
West have not only met but merged, Rudyard Kipling notwithstanding.
Opal Mehta’s demise is but a glaring example of this phenomenon. I
suspect there will shortly be scores of other casualties, given the rise
of the book packaging industry exemplified by outfits like Alloy
Entertainment. Original thought and research is becoming a bit too
rare for comfort.
However, scanty evidence that it still survives keeps us going. For
instance, unless I’m gravely mistaken, C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel
were first off the mark on The Core Competence of the Corporation,
their seminal article in the May-June 1990 issue of the Harvard
Business Review. It was possibly inspired by David McClelland’s article
in American Psychologist (1973) entitled Testing for Competence
Rather Than for Intelligence…which, in turn might have also inspired
Richard E. Boyatzis’s The Competent Manager. These are all prime
examples of ideation along logical pathways, heartening indications
that knowledge is expanding across disciplinary boundaries. Examples
of prescient originality they may not be, of the sort that Marshall
McLuhan is justifiably renowned for, but at least they display evidence
of considerable ratiocination and intelligent extrapolation of ideas.

Barring a handful of embattled outposts, the overall lassitude evident

in our academia tempts one to believe that there’s something about
foreign latitudes that engenders creative outbursts: C.K. Prahalad and
the late Sumantra Ghoshal are just two instances of people of Indian
origin blossoming on foreign soil. Perhaps it’s because western climes
are, on the whole, less intolerant of individual or iconoclastic
expression. Willingness to consider another’s point of view, however, is
a double-edged sword: it lionizes new stuff but lambastes carbon
copies. Hopefully, the straws in the wind are pointing to a newer
direction for Indian writing.

Meanwhile, there’s panic in the ranks of the plagiarists: the grapevine

says that a prominent international Book Prize Committee is instituting
an award for the best re-engineered book of the year. Mike Hammer
and J. Champy* are said to be the main sponsors. Not many, it seems,
are interested in winning what is likely to be called The Little Brown
Opal Cup, a trophy that will be accompanied by 100 reams of A4 size
photocopy paper.

© Subroto Mukerji 10th May 2006

* Authors of Re-engineering the Corporation