Gauri Shinde: “I Am Not So Naïve As To Rip Off Another Person’s  Work.”

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 who has the power to take the woman back to her past and rectify the mistakes.

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, for God’s sake! My heart is clearly not meant to be in this place where there’s so much negativity.”

“It has changed the way I look  at my life as filmmaker,” says Gauri heartbroken and inconsolable in her hurt.

She says in a pained voice, “How do I even dignify something  like this with a response?” says Gauri.

She says she had never heard of the Canadian serial Being Erica  that she is supposed to have been inspired by. “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 situations in Dear Zindagi 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?”