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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Flattery

Don't they say "imitation is the highest form of admiration" or something like that? Well, I'll tell you what it's all about.

I have some bad habits and some very bad habits. Among my bad habits is blogging and among my very habits is that I sometimes indulge is writing poetry, Hindi or English or even Urdu sometimes. Nothing that's worth anything, just to amuse myself and to try and create the illusion that I am more than just a blot in the vast universe.

Anyway, this one time I had a dull toothache that lasted several days and one of my friends, it was MJ I remember, suggested why don't I use that pain as inspiration to write something. It's a common (mis)conception that pain inspires great creativity and a poet is worthless until he has felt real pain in his life. So, be that as it may, I decided to write on it and came up with a Hindi poem (kavita) "Zikr Us Dard Ka" that talked about this toothache in a humorous way. My friend liked the poem very much so I got encouraged and posted it on a forum called www.ebazm.com which I used to frequent. Here's a link if you are curious - Zikr Us Dard Ka It's a great forum for creative people or the ones who like to read poetry. Some people on that forum who read that said good things about my poem and I felt like a million dollars.

They also asked me to follow up on the poem and write about the next part - the visit to the dentist. I picked up on that and wrote another poem called - Ek Anokhi Mulakaat Obviously this was not as good at the first but still people liked it and parts of it I do like.

Now, today, my sister emailed suddenly talking about couple of my poems (English) that I had sent her before and I decided to send her these poems. I decided I would like her to read people's comments as well about my poem and did a search in Google for "Zikr Us Dard Ka". The results surprised me.

My poem is available in places where I had posted it, but also where I had not posted it. At least 2 people are using my poems as their own. LOL. I was surprised and of course enraged, but now I am not sure if I should make a whole lot of noise about my copyrights or consider this a flattering situation and just enjoy it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You should be enraged and pursue copyright or at least protect yourself from people using your work! Always provide documentation of when your work was created even if you just send a self addressed copy to yourself in the mail (be sure to leave it unopened).

I used to write poetry in high school and won several contests. I used to give my work away too until my mother told me that it only takes one poem to become famous. Example: The religious poem entitled "Footprints in the Sand". Plagiarism is NEVER a noble cause.

http://www.plagiarism.org/
http://www.footprints-inthe-sand.com/

Anonymous said...

I too write poetry and you should get credit for your writing.