Character sues creator over intellectual property

Comedienne Rasika Mathur and creation Nilam Auntie are caught up in the age-old battle of ego and ownership. This recent suit is coming over www.DesiYou.com. Mathur claims the offer was made with her alone to create an original series for the South-Asian site that touts the line "Empower the Desi in You."

Well, the Desi in Rasika Mathur, Nilam Auntie, was empowered alright. Mathur claims that once they began to kick around the idea of creating a show around her own Nilam Auntie character, that Nilam Auntie herself began trying to wrestle the production out of her hands.

Nilam Auntie claims to have her best brainstorms in the shower.
( © Le Dao, 2006)

"I woke Rasika up in the middle of the night suddenly, rethinking their meeting in my mind," Nilam says. "All the ideas that flew around the table! I felt like Creative Director Harish Rao really knew my voice, and was truly writing for me," Nilam Auntie proclaims. "I hadn't heard Mathur contributing as much, so I figured, I should rely on myself and this new team to really flesh out my voice."

"The next thing I know, they're having meetings without me," defends Mathur. "I'm literally driving her to the meeting and then having to "find something to do" for 2 hours while they outline episodes.'"

During one meeting in particular, Mathur felt like Nilam Auntie's secretary, being ordered to write up the minutes from the meeting, while Nilam went off to actually shoot herself in a sample pilot.

Mathur threatened her by saying that she'd "rue the day" she ever got "her own Myspace page" (www.myspace.com/nilamauntie). Nilam Auntie raised her threat, and saw her a court proceeding.

Rasika Mathur refused to comment afterwards, but didn't mind the cute photo-op.
( © j. grant ball, 2008)

DesiYou.com had no representatives at the arbitration hearing, as the whole suit took place in Mathur's head at the ungodly hour of 5:00am. It was over within 16 minutes.

"This is not a business for fragile egos, ladies," warns Arbitrator Tom, Mathur's stuffed bear given to her from a cousin in 1982. He looks ragged, but has the most calm demeanor of the entire gang (of stuffed animals). Today, he packed a verbal punch. Provided from Mathur's throat of course. "I suggest you find a cordial way to collaborate on these webisodes. Two minutes and twenty-nine seconds is plenty of time to work with."

Nilam was looking forward to being awarded Rs. 1000,00.00 in punitive damages over traumatic stress, but realizes Mathur is broke. "This whole sharing the same brain thing is getting on our collective nerve."

Tom "attended Harvard Law" and sometimes wears pants.
(© Rasika Mathur, time of blog post)

One can look for the show on www.desiyou.com in the coming months. No further production details were disclosed.

Nilam Auntie was created by Mathur in Winter 2001 on the morning of the Mathur-Nigam mendhi in a Marriott hotel in Los Angeles. Pinches Tacos on Sunset Blvd., their meeting spot and maker of great food, had no comentario.