Dasavatharam flicked from Swahili?

An interesting article and debate this on PFC.Actually a wholly more interesting thing is the question of plagiarism. What is plagiarism? When does an inspiration become plagiarism? I guess this is one accusation that has been the bane of artists since time immemorial. Even with improved technology and more accessibility to art forms world over, the fact remains that any serious artist or thinker or for that matter a scientist is often influenced subconsciously/consciously by things around him. Michael Crichton claims to have been influenced by Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World when he wrote Jurrasic Park. Congo was inspired from King Solomon Mines and so on. But Congo and JP retain a seperate identity, because of the quintessential Crichton persepective that they provide.

So are the seemingly arbitrary accusations of plagiarism, an attempt at celebrity knocking? Or are these genuine accusations? Or are these an attempt to attract attention made by failed artists or artists who have not got what they deserved? After all when makers of meaningful cinema like Balchanadar, Bala, Mani or Kamal are accused of plagiarism, the accuser gets a chance to be associated with stories/movies which have some semblence of quality about them. No such accusations are made about Ajith or Vijay or Rajini movies. Such is the quality of their movies that no sensible person wants to have credit for the storlyline. (Eeeksss...Why would one want to be the story writer of Tirupacchi or Alwar). On the other hand with such big money and fame involved, no one would be above flicking a thing or two from around. So one can't just throw out offhand such accusations.

Kannadasan used an unique way to shut up people crying fowl. Kannadasan faced accusations of plagiarism from a couple of tamil writers early in his movie making career. But then soon he found a very viable method to put an end to these accusations. The titles of all his movies thereafter included a line like this.."adapted from the novel 'Chadramathi' by Ashutosh Mukherjee' or 'adapted from the Begali novel "Akaansha" by Anirban Bandhopadhyay'. And as expected no one took the trouble to find whether such a novel really did exist or not.

So maybe Kamal should announce that Dasavatharam is actually an adaptation of the Swahili oral rendition called "Ten lives of a vagabond in sub Saharan Africa" by Ntkeli Mbwanga. That should shut them up.