Enlightenment

Back in 1999, while having lunch at a Greek Restaurant in Portland Oregon, I heard a tune which was very closely similar to an old classic Bollywood number. Initially, Because of my ignorance, I thought the owners might be in love with Old Bollywood songs, so Me being Me trying to be friendly started talking about Bollywood Music to the owner. But he was clueless on what I was talking about. I literally said to him the music he is playing is from an old Bollywood movie. With that being said, he looked at me as if I have offended him and said: "You don't know anything about Music". My ego was shattered, I used to consider myself a decent knowledgeable person when it comes to Indian Music. But yes very limited with Rest of the world music. So sheer out of frustration I walked out of the door (without even asking him, what music was he playing).
The tune just got into my head and back then there was no Shazam, No Youtube, No Streaming Music. So I just could not figure out what tune was he playing. So I kept on asking a lot of middle eastern friends at work by humming them the tunes, Nobody could recognize it, either because of my talent of humming or because they were my friends and as knowledgeable as I was ;).
Anyways I had no respite for coming weeks and months and over the time, I forgot about it. But then a close friend of mine from Srilanka Ganesh asked me to come for a symphony on one of the weekend. I was initially reluctant but then thought of going because I had no better plans. Bam !! The first symphony which they played was the same tune which I heard in the Restaurant. I was overly joyed. Finally, my wait was over and there were the whole bunch of people who just played the same classic Bollywood number. It was Mozart's  # 40 and Bollywood Number was Itna Na Mujhse Tu Pyar Bada (From Chhayya -1961, Music: Salil Chowdhury, Lyrics: Rajinder Krishan, Singers: Lata M and Talat M). By the way English translation of Itna Na Mujhse se Tu Pyar Bada is Don't increase your love for Me.
Suddenly I was enlightened and but at same time was feeling very lowly as I was/still am a die-hard Bollywood fan.  With the newly acquired knowledge, I decided to find other songs which were inspired by notes from other musicians. I was still going with word inspiration because it was my belief and still is that musical notes are transferable. But who knew, I had to soon come to word Plagiarism as I started digging further in and in.
So to find more about it, I looked back to my school days and remembered that there were two songs which were rumored to be a copy of each other (Both the Musicians went on accusing each other). However, it was later revealed that both of them had taken inspiration from altogether a different Artist. It was the topic of discussion between Rahul, Ranjan and few of our other friends.
The songs which I am talking about are Jumma Chumma De De (Jumma Please Give me a Kiss) From Movie Hum -1991, Music : Laxmi - Pyare,  Artist Sudesh Bhosle (Lot of people think that it was Great Amitabh Bachchan, the BBS star of millennia lend his voice for this song, in fact Hindigeetmala says it so, But actually it was Sudesh Bhosle - the mimicry artist, who dubbed for Sanjeev Kumar for movie professor ki padosan because of untimely death of Sanjeev Kumar.) and the other one being Tamma Tamma loge From Movie Thanedaar -1990, Music Bappi Lahiri (Popularly Known as Bappi Da, who is also famous for his love for Gold, Bling Bling ), Artist: Anuradha Paudwal(who is more famous for her alleged affair with Music Mogul Late Gulshan Kumar) and Bappi Da himself.
There was a huge controversy back then on both the songs and there even was a court case, but movie makers decided to settle it out of court, because it was revealed that songs were copied/inspired from Morty Kante's Tama from his 1987 album Akwaba Beach. The Album had another song Ye Ke Ye Ke, which was also similar to Tama song and was used in another Classic Amitabh Bachchan Movie Agneepath as background score. Agneepath is a cult classic. The characters  Vijay Dinanath Chauhan and Kaancha Cheena are immortal now. Vijay. the main protagonist was played by Amitabh Bachchan and provided him his first National Award. Vijay's character was inspired by an American Gangster of early 20th century Al Capone, popularly known as Scarface who was also adapted as Tony Montana by famous method actor Al Pacino in 1983 Classic Scarface. Agneepath was later remade with present day heartthrob Hritik Roshan by producer Karan Johar of Dharma Production as a tribute to his Father Yash Johar (who was producer of 1990 Agneepath under same Dharma Production). Kancha Cheena

So this was my start on identifying the right inspirations :) for some of the songs which I love.