That's perhaps the philosophy that is guiding imitation music business in Kerala weeks ahead of the Onam festival. Pre-Onam time is high season for audio cassette industry in the state and producers of parody songs are flooding the pavements with low-priced versions that recognise no copyright rules.

Where the original cassette costs Rs 45-50, the duplicate is available for Rs 20. And as special festival offers are made, a cassette is available for even Rs 10.

Following the recent boom in the sales of devotional song cassettes, more than fifty audio-recording studios have mushroomed in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode. Where there once was only the Tharangini Studio, set up by playback singer KJ Yesudas in 1981, there are now music enterprises like the Alap Studio, owned by playback singer Unni Menon and even a Church-sponsored Santa Cicily Studio. Cassettedistributors, both the Chennai-based BMG Crescendo and the local players like John Saagarika, are active in the state. And for the newborn cassette kings, two high points in business are the Sabarimala season (November-January) and Onam (August-September).

It's not just the parody of parody cassettes that has hit the cassette-recording studios. Apart from Kalabahavan Mani's folksongs and parodies, Hindu devotional songs and sound tracks of popular films are being sold by the parallel industry. The Church also indirectly patronises sale of Christian devotional songs.

Pavement-sellers are so alert that even the music cassettes of the latest Malayalam hit films like Veendum Chila Veetu Kariyangal, Friends, etc. are available. Duplicates cost only one-third of the original. And they even bring in a value-addition of sorts.

According to Babu, a pavement-seller, the low priced cassettes have more songs. Many of the established recorded studios sell cassettes with under C-60 audio-length. In spite ofthe technical superiority, few cassettes are able to carry more than two hit songs.