Jayeeta Majumdar Singhee

This 20th October, Ishaan turned 2. We wernt sure whether to have a party, but once decided...the list bordered close to 200!!!

As Ishaan's favourite cartoon is Hanuman, and he just loves everything "Ham" does, decided to put the theme as Hanuman. Well, was not a very difficult theme, as Hanuman seems to be the in-thing with hanuman pencil boxes, sharpeners, key chains, wind chimes, masks and many many more all over the market.

We even had a Hanuman cake( Ishaan of course loved it), and an invitation card which said Ishuman (like Hanuman). Simi made this card in less than an hour....well, what can I say? She gets all this from me :-d.

Ruhi here points out that Shantanu Moitra (of Lage Raho MunnaiBhai and Parineeta fame) has in fact hackneyed the song, “Pal Pal Pal Har Pal” from a Cliff Richard number.

Well, read on some more on the net and you will realize Mr.Moitra has also maroed another of his numbers...the "Kaisi Paheli Zindagani" from Parineeta from Louis Armstrong's "A Kiss to Build a Dream On".

Most people writing about such things on the net seem to be completely outraged by all this. Me…not so sure though. I haven’t heard the Louis Armstrong song, and if Moitra has used only parts of these verses, and then improvised on them enough…it won’t really amount to plagiarism.

We have had musicians doing it all the time. R.D used many of Abba’s numbers, and lots of other western folk and classical music in his renditions. Shankar Jaikishen lifted the first few sentences of their song “Sayonara” from a Persian song.

Bappi Da, Anu Malik, Nadeem Sravan do it all the time...OK, OK...just kidding. That IS plagiarism at its worst...or best:-p

Coming back to Moitra, if he is inspired once in a while, and ends up providing us a lot of other original and good music otherwise, I am sure it’s fine. After all how many would have actually heard Louis Armstrong and Cliff Richard?

But then...a little star right at the bottom of the album…with the names of those inspirers wouldn’t really cause too much of a heartburn. What say Shantanu Da?

On a closing note, read this R.D interview. Found this while Googling for something else. Here he talks about his inspired music, childhood, father, struggle in the industry and more.

And this blog here, is all about plagarism :).

Kiran Desai has won the Man Booker prize for her book, The Inheritence of Loss. The lady is just 35….meaning a mere five years older than me :(. Makes one realize all the great things people achieve, the hard work that goes behind it and of course, your own age :-p.

The book is a good read, although a little too black at times for my taste. But then, I never liked Arundhati Roy much too…Never thought she deserved the award. And this one is far far better than that one.

One reason I am glad to see her is win is because the lady is quite charming …she had this to say in her winning speech, “I know the best book does not win. The compromise wins.” Heh :)

Of course the judges didn’t feel that; Professor Lee had the following words to say, “It is a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness.”

Another reason for my happiness is because I really really love her mother Anita Desai’s work, and the lady never won the Booker, even though she was nominated three times for the award. So, maybe this award was long due.

Well, two reasons that don’t make for much of a reason…:-p. Anyways, Congratulations Kiran!