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.