A few days ago, I was walking through Pondy Bazaar and as I passed a few pirated book stalls, a thought popped into my head: imagine if my book was in there. Would I be pissed (well, yes)? But would I also feel a little validated, since piracy equals popularity?

And today I find myself in this pirated poetry anthology.

I took the trouble of downloading the pdf — and umm, that’s not my poem, folks. And apparently, the other 3163 poets in there have poems misattributed to them too. Maybe it’s a matching game?

Some people with alot of time and pot must have decided that poets were an interesting subspecies to conduct reaction research on. Real names, fake poems — in the thousands. I wouldn’t have been particularly miffed if a poem I really did write made it in there, given that in the absence of a credit card or decent poetry sections in my local bookstores, I do read quite a bit of poetry online myself. But neither am I miffed about the identity theft, truth be told. Above all else, I’m curious what the point of this experiment actually is. Own up, folks.