The offices of Vakil, Vakil, Vakil, and Vakil, Attorneys at Law (Copyrights & Patents ‘R’ Us) were abuzz with activity. The law firm had got a lucrative windfall thanks to an outfit called the Swadeshi Jagran Bunch (SJB), whose motto ‘Jingoism’ ‘R’ Us indicated that it prioritised uber-nationalism above all else, including foibles of grammar.
A panel of educationists in Karnataka had proposed to amend the state’s school curriculum so as to, among other things, expose the ‘fake news’ that some Greek fellow called Pythagoras had formulated the well-known theory named after him, and that an Angrezi chap called Newton had discovered gravity, after an apple fell on his head, when in fact both these milestones derived from ancient India.
Following this, the SJB had decided to file a lawsuit, via the good offices of Vakil, Vakil, Vakil, and Vakil, and build a protective firewall to prevent future intellectual piracies. Seated in their conference room, the quartet of Vakils discussed the issue, in all its ramifications.
Vakil No 1: I fear that what the Karnataka educationists have uncovered as ‘fake news’ is just the tip of the iceberg.
Vakil No 2: I fear that your fear is well founded.
Vakil No 3: I third that motion.
Vakil No 4: I’ll take that under advisement.
None of the Vakils knew what that term meant but they had heard it being used in Netflix courtroom
dramas and approved of the very vakilish ring it had with which to establish one’s lawyerly credentials.
Vakil No 1: The conspiracy to defraud our ancient legacy goes much beyond this Pythagoras and his
wretched triangles. It extends to the so-called Father of Geometry, You Klid.
Vakil No 2: You Klid? Is that a prototype of YouTube, which is full of all sorts of plagiarised rip-offs?
Vakil No 3: Sure sounds like it. Everyone knows that it was ancient Ind that invented the zero, which is also a circle, the most perfect shape from which all other shapes are descended, including triangles.
Vakil No 4: I’ll take under advisement.
Vakil No 1: Exactly. And all that stuff about Newton and apples is also bogus. It is common knowledge, or it ought to be, that it was one lady scientist from ancient India, Nutan, who invented gravity. And it wasn’t an apple but a guava, which doesn’t grow in England. So gravity is an ancient Indian invention. QED.
Vakil No 2: And then there’s physics, and this guy called Archimedes and his claim to have discovered the principle of displacement when he stepped into a bathtub. And what did he shout when he did so? Oh, Rekha! Clear evidence that another unsung lady scientist of Indian origin inspired the discovery.
Vakil No 3: Cherchez la femme!
Vakil No 3 had once eaten in a French restaurant in Puducherry and liked to flaunt his knowledge of the language he’d gleaned from the experience.
Vakil No 4: I’ll take that under advisement.
Vakil No 1: Gentlemen, it is not just our scientific heritage that these foreigners have plundered from us. They’ve also stolen our literary heritage. There was a notorious plagiarist who ‘borrowed’, to use the term loosely, all his plot ideas – about star-crossed lovers who come to a tragic end, and a mad king wandering around on a blasted heath, and a yuvraj who always dresses in black and can’t make up his mind to do anything – from another source.
Vakil No 2: Shame, Shame!
Vakil No 1: But now, thanks to the SJB’s assiduous research, the ‘only begetter’ of these works has come to light, a scribe of antique Brahmin vintage: S.P. Iyer…
Vakil No 4: Let’s all take that under advisement.