i am a thief every idea every phrase every platitude that i use and will use including in this article is sourced from somewhere this is a fact that i had come to terms with way back in time and since then have dropped all pretensions to originality of any kind the maxim that i live by is that the human brain is a reactor and not a creator you put something in and something else comes out images of the icons of the movie world of the bygone days flicker in my consciousness i recall watching the first day first show of a muchawaited hollywood film in a theatre as a school boy to my delight i found filmmakers like manmohan desai and many other senior writers and technicians also watching the film theyve come to steal from the american films the usher whispered to me youll find one of them making this film or at least sequences from this film somewhere in one of theirs for sure plagiarising from hollywood films is not something that my generation or i introduced to the hindi cinema our predecessors had made this into a fine art long before we were born but they were not lazy thieves unlike the present computer surfing and dvd generation thieves who steal shot by shot our ancestors as well as we absorbed the material fleshed it out and served it with the essential local flavour thrown in my films dil hai ki manta nahin and jism which were sourced from it happened one night and double indemnity respectively are the best examples of how an american seed when planted into the indian soil blooms into an exotic plant similar and yet very different from the original but in this globalised age the indian film has lost its indianness the current generation has spawned a bunch of lazy thieves is it because their hearts and minds are not rooted in the indian ethos or has technology made stealing such a convenient experience technology however is a doubleedged sword if it has made stealing easy it has made detection easier gone are those days when you could go to international film festivals lift ideas and pass it off as your own work to the gullible indian audience how delighted the critic gets when he catches your subterfuge and uses your crookery to show off his own knowledge remember how the deified black couldnt bask in its own glory simply because a critic and a rival art filmmaker spilled the beans about it being sourced from the miracle worker let us be honest we still steal like our predecessors did the only difference is that our hunting ground has expanded we now have the entire gamut of world cinema at our fingertips to lift from dont believe me check out this list then judwa inspired by a cantonese movie the twin dragons aamir lifted from philipino movie cavitebheja fry inspired from french film le diner