She also said very matter of factly that she was sure Harvard won’t punish her because it was “an honest, honest mistake”-(as if by using the word, “ honest” twice she could convince viewers and Katie Couric, she was innocent) and that life would go on for her.

I would have been more impressed if the girl had had the guts to come on the show, and acknowledge what she did. Katie Couric was kind in her interview, may be because she has three girls herself, but I was surprised that the 19 year old could sit there and talk so glibly and confidently insisting that she read those two books in High school and somehow internalized the books to an extent that 40 passages just came out as almost identical versions of Megan’s writings.
Kaavya said she was rewriting those passages and will have an acknowledgement to McCafferty in the book. Soon after the interview several things happened the past week. Harvard says it is reviewing the situation and needs to investigate more; that while the charges of plagiarism would have been more serious if they were directed at any of her course work, Harvard does expect its students to conduct themselves with integrity wherever they go. Kaavya has taken leave of absence from Harvard, her apology was not accepted by Megan McCafferty, and finally her publishing house has pulled all her books from every single store world wide-(I may have just gotten the last copy of what may well become the plagiarists collectors’ item).

An interesting question that someone asked when I posted my thoughts on Dr Deepak Chopra’s blog, intentblog, was how a company could offer a 500,000 advance to a 17 year old who had not written a darned thing except “a chatty email” outlining the story.

In an interesting article in the Boston Globe by David Mehegan, the same question was asked. David writes that the “answer just might be found on the copyright page of ''How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life." There it says: ''Copyright 2006 by Alloy Entertainment and Kaavya Viswanathan."

Alloy is the so-called book packager that helped the Harvard sophomore, now 19, develop the concept for her novel. Everyone involved insists she wrote every word, though Alloy president Leslie Morgenstein said in an e-mail that his firm ''helped Kaavya conceptualize and plot the book." Whatever the extent of its role, Alloy claimed half the rights, which according to publishing experts means that both Alloy and Viswanathan would have signed the contract.”

This so called “ helping young writers conceptualize and plot the book,” business has become a huge publishing racket, where young literary upstarts are taken in hand by companies like these and many a time books ghost written for them. So did Kaavya fall in to the same trap and let the glitter of such a huge deal dazzle her and let the company manipulate the text? What punishment should the publishing house face, in such a scenario if found guilty.

I still feel James Frey was the small fry in a world of mighty Oprah and a big publishing house and was made the scapegoat. Now come to think of it, all the poor guy did, was to embellish his memoir, a book he initially wanted to sell as a work of fiction but was coerced into selling as a memoir by his publishing house because it would have better sale value. He gave in after having his work rejected by 19 publishers. There was no plagiarism involved. His career is destroyed-at least for now.

There were many South Asians who felt that this is a huge step back for South Asian writers and that they will all have to pay the price for Kaavya’s seeming dishonesty, because now their books will come under a cloud and the case will be that of being guilty unless proven otherwise.

I have always felt that when something doesn’t look too good to be true, it usually isn’t. Perhaps this is a lesson for youngsters and older people alike that when you try to take shortcuts to success by less than honest means, the price you pay can be not just financial-it can lead to public humiliation, because as you sow so shall you reap.