Not naive to rip off another person’s work, says Gauri Shinde

Filmmaker Gauri Shinde is shattered by the plagiarism charges which have virtually fallen on her like a bolt from the blue.

A report claimed that her second highly acclaimed feature film Dear Zindagi is similar to a Canadian television series about a troubled young woman and her therapist.

Gauri says she was not even aware of the existence of the Canadian series until this imaginary controversy broke out. “Why does everything good that happens in life have to come with a price? Am I so naïve as to rip off someone else’s work and feel I can get away with it? Not in this day age. My heart is clearly not meant to be in this place where there’s so much negativity.”

A still from the Canadian serial Being Erica

“It has changed the way I look at my life as filmmaker,” Gauri said, adding that she had never heard of the Canadian serial Being Erica.

“First of all, I didn’t know of this series. Secondly, am I so naïve as to think I can get away with borrowing from it in this day and age of instant accessibility to cinema and art all over the world? The incidents, the characters and the situations in DZ are deeply personal. To even suggest that they have an extraneous lifeline is insulting and hurtful.”

Gauri feels there are so many works of cinema and literature about the relationship between a therapist and the patient. “Are they all derivative? No? Then why am I being pulled up for similarities that are purely coincidental?” she questions.