By Sumita Sheth

We would have had to be living under a rock, in the ocean's deepest caverns to not have heard of the recent rumbles over Opal Mehta. However to summarize, the book "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" by Kaavya Viswanathan was recently withdrawn from the market after it's much hyped release and USD 500,000 book deal, due to assertions of plagiarism. Ms. Viswanathan defended herself saying she has a photographic memory while the people involved in the books she is said to have borrowed from have had mixed reactions.

Recently, one of them, TANUJA DESAI HIDIER shared her thoughts on finding echoes of and sections from her work Born Confused in “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life”. “Born Confused” was printed in 2002 and follows Dimple Lala, a second generation South Asian American Teen trying to come to terms with her multicultural identity, her “American Life” and what she thinks her parents traditional Indian expectations are for her, eventually realizing everything is all about finding your own comfortable balance. EGO shares excerpts of Tanuja’s incisive yet compassionate analysis of the situation. (Sections in bold have been added).

On book packaging and discovering the examples of lifting
"I was stunned to find two dozen instances of lifting from Born Confused in the Opal Mehta book (as in "identical language and /or common scene or dialogue structure"--as Random House put it in their statement regarding Megan Mccafferty's plagiarized novel)."

"…I was extremely surprised to find that the majority, though not all, of the passages in Opal Mehta taken from Born Confused are those dealing with descriptions of various aspects of South Asian culture (food, dress, locale, even memories of India, etc.) and the way that culture is expressed in America; essentially every scene of Opal Mehta that deals with any aspect of South Asian culture in more than passing detail has lifted something from Born Confused. One would think that these kinds of cultural details at least could have been drawn from Ms Viswanathan's personal experience, given our similar cultural backgrounds (and the similar cultural backgrounds and ages of our protagonists)."

"I admit I don't have firsthand experience of how packaging works. I didn't even know what a book packager was until 17th Street Productions (now Alloy) contacted me soon after Born Confused launched to ask me if I would like to do an Indian-American teen story with them. Apparently, they had loved the excerpt of Born Confused published in Seventeen Magazine back in 2002 and thought I would be perfect for the project. I turned down the offer.”

“Interestingly, several parts of that-including the opening and closing--are present and strongly echoed in the Opal Mehta book.” It was a surreal experience for me, looking at these and the other parallel parts side by side. The feeling was almost as if someone had broken into your home-and in some ways this is what literally had happened, considering so much of Born Confused is drawn from my life (and home): The alcohol cabinet in my non-drinking household in small town Massachusetts was now in Opal's, the details of my family's two dinnertimes because of all the years of working late into the night by my father, too; my mother's food, from her mother's recipes, transplanted to Opal's table, her slinky black outfit too; my ecstatic and eye-opening discovery of Jackson Heights Queens during an enthralled and emotional day there many years ago, suddenly turned to Edison New Jersey."

"Was Ms. Viswanathan not confident enough in her own background to rely on it? Was Alloy not confident enough in it and in her? Did either or both think you could just substitute one kind of Indian for another? A friend brought my attention to a couple of observant bloggers who seemed to have caught on early to this grand error, commenting on how jarring it was to see a Gujarati/Marathi meal on a South Indian table; noting that not all salwar khameezes are gaudy so it was more than a coincidence, these similarities; and that some of the memories of India hearken back to a much older India in the Opal Mehta book(which makes sense considering the many years that separate Ms Viswanathan and myself)-- details that may have escaped a person not familiar with the culture."

On the Opal Mehta book jacket
"Indeed, if one were to judge a book by its cover, this cultural ambiguity is reflected there as well: Even the cover art for the Opal Mehta book is noncommittal in a sense, most likely in an attempt to be 'mainstream': in the UK a faceless photograph of an ethnically ambiguous though probably white girl fronts the book, and in the US, it's an ethnically ambiguous drawing (which is not to say South Asians cannot be very fair-yes, we can have the whole spectrum of skin tones, yes we can have blue eyes, we can be short, tall, overachievers, underachievers, middle of the road, etc, etc)."

On what current society holds as acceptable, vis a vis originality
"In an era of sampling on songs, and reality TV that has little to do with reality, and fictitious autobiographies, and, of course, some of the aspects of packaging itself, it's interesting to see what is happening to the idea of 'truth', of originality, of self-expression, where amalgamation and recombining amounts to creation and where it grows fuzzy under the influence (and the anxiety thereof). Of course, in some of these instances source material is revealed and the work is transparent to an extent--many songs that use riffs from other songs do so openly (and in fact, given the very nature of a riff as something usually repeated and hopefully memorable, and certainly audible, it would be difficult for it to be otherwise)."

"One wonders, though, when it will be less about X being the new Y which was the new Z, and when the focus can shift back more solidly to finding and using one's voice in a less tidily manageable and limiting space than this sort of classification often requires. This type of packaging can lead to a situation, and in fact has already to some extent, where thinking 'in the box' is rewarded more than thinking outside of it. As art is usually about thinking outside that box, or redefining it at least, this is a bit of a dilemma. And one can only wonder what impact this has on the general public consuming the works, and reviews, and categories in question. Can it lead to a rather reductionist way of seeing art, and of viewing the world?"

On the apparently changing definitions of plagiarism
"Certainly there have been some comments (that I've seen a couple of journalists/commentators make) in the course of this debate on what constitutes plagiarism that surprise and sadden me. Some of these people--hopefully a minority--seem to feel there are very limited ways to describe not only coming-of-age and immigrant experiences but also South Asian culture in particular. In the latter instance it's as if they suggest there are only a handful of key "ethnic" words or phrases (and ordering of these!) to use in describing important aspects of South Asian culture, such as food, dress, locales, etc. with the implied conclusion being that the lack of originality in these instances in the Opal Mehta book is somehow less egregious, or at least more understandable, as a result."

"That is terribly sad to me--and reveals an extremely reductive and rather ignorant point of view when it comes to the diversity of South Asian voices and of South Asia itself--not to mention of coming of age novels themselves. The fact that at least five authors, and at least five books, were 'borrowed from' must not be lost in all this. And nor should the authors involved-each coming from different situations and histories and with unique stories to tell-- be lumped together beyond the fact of having this unfortunate experience in common. To do so would only amplify the negative effects of packaging in publishing; as we all know, authors and what they create (and people in general!) aren't cookie-cutter cut-and-paste parts, interchangeable and replaceable -- they are, at their best, individuals with voices and something to say.”

On what Opal Mehta, the book, could have potentially meant for South Asian writers
“When I first heard about Kaavya Viswanathan and the Opal Mehta book I felt quite connected to her, in an almost familial way. Ms. Viswanathan and I are both South Asian American women, writing about South Asian American female teens in this case, and in part that cultural experience, in a market where this story/perspective is not widely described, particularly for this demographic. I was proud of her, and thought perhaps the buzz about her signaled a door being thrown open wide for other types of voices in diaspora writing as well.”

But now, Tanuja thinks that “another, more significant door, closed upon her at the same time she was presented with this opportunity. I wonder sometimes about those lost pages: the story Ms Viswanathan was originally writing before she joined forces with the publishing/packaging industry, the story that was a little too dark for their needs. What if those pages contained a truly fresh and honest voice? What if, had her pages fallen into different hands, they might have blossomed into a truly compelling tale, written by someone with significant literary potential?”

“It was so exciting initially to see the glittering welcome given to a South Asian American voice like this. And so should that hunger and warmth greet the other South Asian diaspora voices out there as well: Shani Mootoo, Abha Dawesar, Marina Budhos, Mitali Perkins, Meera Nair, Kamila Shamsie, Mohsin Hamid, Bali Rai-to name a very mere few.”

“…it is…important that (all) South Asian American voices be heard; the more out there the more we can begin to approximate expressing the richness and diversity of this culture-the flip side being the fewer out there, the more susceptible one becomes to a stereotyping of sorts, to sometimes having to carry the impossible responsibility of representing a culture that is as diverse as the number of people who make it up."

On writing
I know for me writing Born Confused was one of the great joys and journeys of my life. As Salman Rushdie said regarding this whole affair, one must stand by their words, and so I do: I am proud of my work, and I am very, very proud of the people and the community I am celebrating in it-you included, and these authors included as well.

So to all the writers out there finding their voices: Keep the faith. And to the readers who know the difference: Thank you.

And despite what may seem sometimes to be signals to the contrary from some elements of the industry, I do believe that old adage holds true: Be yourself. Not always easy perhaps, but commendable to try.

Tanuja Desai HidierAuthor Tanuja Desai Hidier is also a filmmaker and musician (lead singer/songwriter in both a London and NYC band). Her first novel, Born Confused, the first ever South Asian American coming-of-age story, is a Larry King pick of the week, an American Library Association BBYA book of the year, and a Sunday Times (Times of London) book of the week. The book is available worldwide, and has been translated into Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Italian, and German. The Born Confused audio book has just been released with Blackstone Audio as well.

Tanuja has also had her short stories included in numerous anthologies, and she has been a recipient of both the London Writers/Waterstones Award and the James Jones First Novel Fellowship Award.

Tanuja recently finished adapting Born Confused for film. She lives in London, where she is at work on her next novel, a comic book series, and rock/pop CD.

More on Tanuja at www.ABCreativeD.com.

Published July 12, 2006