Saturday, November 22, 2008

Taare Zameen Par–A STOLEN IDEA??

Shakuntala Devi infuriated

Wow..!! This is certainly something unexpected from Aamir Khan - apparently the ‘perfectionist’ of Bollywood very perfectly plagiarized the story of ‘Taare Zameen Par’ from maths genius Shakuntala Devi.

Shakuntala Devi has accused Aamir Khan Productions of stealing ideas from her own book ‘In the wonderland of numbers’ and dishing out Taare Zameer Par without giving her any credit. What keeps me wondering is if she was locked up in cryogenic sleep all these months? Or was she paid by Aamir Khan himself for a little publicity before ‘Ghajini’ releases. Because its been almost a year since TZP released and NOW she breaks it to the media.

Anyways the 69 year old wizardess is now producing her own movie based on her book. “Some of the things shown in Taare Zameen Par have been taken straight from my book. People ask me why I don’t sue the producer of the Aamir Khan movie,” she said. “I expect him to write a letter explaining why he did this,” she said.

Shakuntala Devi spilled these beans during an interview in Beijing. Apparently this is the second time a film producer has stolen her ideas. A Rajesh Khanna starrer, Red Rose used ideas from her short story, The whole world is mad , which was published in Femina magazine, she said. While Red Rose was a big pile of unmentionable, it still matters that the producers gave her squat credit.

She said she had talked to several producers including Kamal Haasan to turn her book, In the wonderland of numbers into a movie. In case you’re wondering, the story is about a nine-year-old girl who goes through a transformation from being a mathematics hater to a mathematical genius.

“One producer asked if he can show the heroine as an 18-19 year old girl and introduce a disco number. I said it will destroy the whole purpose of the movie. My mission is to make people fall in love with mathematics and feel the joy of it” she said.

“I am considering Rajnikant or some other producer for the movie. I wrote the book as a movie script”, she said.

She said Kamala Haasan told her the proposed movie could cause a worldwide sensation if she found an intelligent producer capable of utilising the material in the book. “But he cannot make this movie. He is usually the hero of his movies. Also, he does not love numbers that much,” she said.

“From childhood, I have been asked to compete against computers and I somehow regarded it as my enemy,” she said laughing. But her dream project in Bangalore will involve experts from the IT industry as well as rope in Sanskrit scholars who can make sense of intricate Vedic mathematics.

“You know a lot of mathematical knowledge is stored in shlokas and sutras and it is not easy to make the most out of them. We need specialists to research and develop this area,” she said.

She has penned as many as 22 books as of now. The maths geek has been shocking audiences across the world since childhood with her prodigious talent of twirling numbers. She is in the process of setting up a global institution on mathematics that will train young minds and do research in Vedic Mathematics. Shakuntala Devi is worried that the advent of computers is harming the thinking ability of children, who are increasing losing interest in mathematics. “Mathematics has already lost its popularity in the West. Now, I feel this is happening in India as well,” she said.

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