Book 6 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. The Stolen Light engages with the particular difficulties of Mehta's experience: he was blind in a college made for the seeing, he was an Indian in the United States, a Hindu in a Christian environment, a dark-skinned man surrounded by white people. With compelling honesty and humour, Mehta describes his struggles to live an ordinary university life - dating, riding a bicycle, keeping up with his studies - while dealing with incredible obstacles.
Unsurpassed as a prose stylist, Ved Mehta is an acknowledged master of the essay form. In this book--the first special collection of Mehta`s outstanding writings--the distinguished author demonstrates a wide range of possibilities available to the narrative and descriptive writer today. Addressing subjects that range from religion to politics and on to education, and writing with eloquence and high style, Mehta here offers a sampling of his works. Mehta provides a splendid, insightful introduction on the craft of the essay, meditating on the long history and diverse purposes of the form and on the struggle of learning to write in it himself. In the eight reportorial, autobiographical, and reflective essays that follow--each a self-contained examination of cultural, intellectual, or personal themes--he writes on his experience of becoming an American citizen; on Christian theology, with a focus on Dietrich Bonhoeffer; on Calcutta and the poorest of the Indian poor; on the disastrous fates of three of Mehta`s brilliant Oxford contemporaries; and on a variety of other subjects.
Book 10 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. In lucid, sparse prose Mehta documents the twists and turns of a romantic history peppered with disappointment and anguish - that is until, in his search for self-understanding, he meets a surprising guide who shows the way toward new insights about himself and those he has loved.
The last volume of Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. During the clamour of a New York dinner party, Mehta is startled to find his father crying on his mother's shoulders. This episode begins a painful and revealing voyage into his father's personal history. In stark prose, Mehta unravels a passionate, clandestine affair that bore quiet yet extraordinary consequences for himself and his family. Red Letters also serves as a brilliant exploration and a recreation of British India: its sights and sounds, its injustices and its secrecy.
Daddyji is, at first glance, a biographical portrait of Amolak Ram Mehta, a distinguished Indian public-health officer, written by his son Ved Mehta, but in reality, as the story unfolds, it is seen to be a recreation, in crystalline detail, of a whole world—the everyday life of pre-Partition Lahore. Daddyji (1972) is the first book in Mehta’s extraordinary series of memoirs, Continents of Exile.
Returning to 1960s' India after decades beyond its borders, Ved Mehta explores his native country with two sets of eyes: those of the man educated in the West, and those of the child raised under the Raj. Travelling from the Himalayas in the east to Kerala in the west, Ved Mehta's observations and insights into India and some of its most interesting figures - including Indira Gandhi, Jaya Prakash Narayan and Satyajit Ray - create one of the twentieth century's most thought-provoking travel memoirs.
Book 5 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. In 1949, fifteen-year-old Ved Mehta -- blind since the age of four -- left his native India and travelled alone to a school for the blind in Arkansas, USA. For the next three years he studied with over a hundred blind or partially sighted children at the school. Here, he would learn how to deal with Western teachers, date girls, and begin to perceive objects by means of 'sound-shadows'. Sound-Shadows of the New World brilliantly traces the emigrant experience amid the difficult transition from adolescence into adulthood.
This definitive collection of Ved Mehta’s work contains excerpts from nearly all his writings, many of which first appeared in the New Yorker. It begins with his first book, the classic autobiography highlighting his blindness, Face to Face, and features his iconic books about India and his family saga, Continents of Exile. Each entry comes with a reflection by Mehta. Authoritative and illuminating, the book is not just an introduction to this seminal author but also a passionate record of a writer looking back upon his own work.
Blind since the age of four, Ved Mehta led a lonely and turbulent childhood in India until he was accepted to the Arkansas School for the Blind, to which he flew alone at fifteen. America and the school changed his life, leading to degrees at Oxford and Harvard Universities and a fruitful writing career. Face to Face (1957), Mehta’s first book, is the author’s autobiography touching upon childhood, blindness and remaking himself. It remains one of his most beloved works.
Book 8 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. Veritas continues Mehta's journey through education: this time as a Ph.D. student and Residential Fellow at Harvard. His experience illustrates the dramatic changes in institutional habits and behaviour that were to take places in the late 1960s, as well as how dramatically out-of-touch many senior lecturers were to the societal mood around them.
Book 1 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. On its surface, Daddyji serves as a lucid biographical portrait of Amolak Ram Mehta, an esteemed Indian public servant, written by his son. But as Ved Mehta's story unwinds, it becomes apparent that something else is being recreated - the intricacies and intimacies of a lost world, of pre-Partition Lahore.
Ved Mehta's brilliant Mahatma Gandhi and his Apostles provides an unparalleled portrait of the man who lead India out of its colonial past and into its modern form. Travelling all over India and the rest of the world, Mehta gives a nuanced and complex, yet vividly alive, portrait of Gandhi and of those men and women who were inspired by his actions.
Plunged into the world of a freshman at Pomona College in the sanguine fifties, Ved Mehta, a blind student from India, set out to prove himself. His experiences combined the wonderful and the tragic: love fulfilled and unfulfilled; the suicide of his best friend; and the journey through sexual awareness.
Book 3 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. Ved continues the story of Ved Mehta's two earlier memoirs, Daddyji, a biographical portrait of his father, and Mamaji, an exploration of his mother and her history. The focus here turns toward Mehta's childhood, his education in an Indian orphanage for the blind, and the general experience of blind people in India.
Fly and the Fly Bottle is perhaps Ved Mehta's masterpiece: a collection of his brilliantly revealing conversations with some of the twentieth century's most important philosophers. Engaging with such heavyweights as Isaiah Berlin, Gilbert Ryle, and Elizabeth Anscombe, Mehta is not only able to shed light on the personalities involved in shaping modern philosophy, as well as on the particularities of that philosophic thought, but also to minutely examine the surrounding atmosphere of mid-century British life.
Book 2 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. Translating individual experience into the universal, Mehta recounts the story of his mother's arranged marriage to a British-trained doctor and, by extension, of an ancient Indian family's struggle to find its place in a modern, rapidly changing world.
Translating individual experience into the universal, Mehta recounts the story of his mother's arranged marriage to a British-trained doctor, and by extension, of an ancient Indian family's struggle to find its place in the modern world
Book 11 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. This chapter of Mehta's remarkable memoirs details the many dilemmas he encounters during the building of a new home on a strange, irresistible island: from ever-climbing costs to a frequent infestations of potato bugs in the basement. Underlying the travails of construction lies a richly allegorical tale about Mehta's own struggles as a writer and as a man in love.
The history of a generation is recalled as the author remembers his elation and fear upon acceptance at Oxford and reflects on his year there and the extraordinary classmates whom he watched emerge onto the world scene.
The six pieces collected here for the first time have been chosen by Ved Mehta from a decade of reportorial work for The New Yorker. “They reflect, in different ways,” he writes in the foreword, “the worlds in which I feel at home: India, where I was born and brought up; the United States and Britain, where I have lived since I was fifteen; and what Milton called ‘the olive grove of Academe,’ where I spent an interlude of almost nine years. The pieces are united by the ancient theme of the tongue and the pen. . . .” Among the literate personages Mr. Mehta writes about are the U.N. interpreter George Sherry (“A Second Voice”); the English editor and broadcaster Sir William Haley (“The Third”); the Oxford bookman Sir Basil Blackwell (“Quiet, Beneficent Things”); the Urdu translator and critic Ram Babu Saksena (“There Is No Telling”); the Indian novelist R. K. Narayan (“The Train Had Just Arrived at Malgudi Station”); and the American linguist Noam Chomsky (“John Is Easy to Please”). These men and many of their confreres who appear in the book “might well be surprised to find themselves in the same room,” Mr. Mehta writes. “They would have difficulty in understanding one another’s manners, attitudes, and, in some cases, language. The gathering would indeed be a bizarre one . . . but for me it would be Heaven.” Mr. Mehta combines the literary exuberance of the true writer with the intellectual rigor of the true scholar; his style is marked by wit and sweep and fire. In this book about encounters with virtuosos of the written and the spoken word he has made a delightful addition to the pleasures of literacy.
Book 4 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. Set against the distant storm of the Second World War and the waning light of British Raj, Ved Mehta's brilliant memoir Ledge Between the Streams tells of an Indian childhood and the coming to terms with growing blindness: how, despite his disability, he learned English, Braille, horseback riding, bicycling, touch typing, and roller skating.
Book 9 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. In Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker, Ved Mehta provides an unparalleled glimpse into the inner workings of the one of world's most famous magazines. He portrays in detail the strange, nurturing atmosphere at the New Yorker, and he recounts the earthquakes that shook the magazine as it moved into the hands of more commercial ownership. At once a tribute to William Shawn - one of the longest serving editors in the New Yorker's history - Mehta's memoir is also a joyful tribute to the intricately linked arts of editing, writing, and reading.
This elegantly written book by the renowned author Ved Mehta is a chronicle of a tumultuous dozen years of recent Indian history—from the unsettled conditions that preceded the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to the Hindu revival that followed the assassination of her son Rajiv. As Mehta explores the impulses that brought about the political and economic changes between 1982 and 1994, he also reveals what life is like in modern India, giving us a memorable portrait of an enigmatic land. Mehta begins by describing the politics that swirled around Indira Gandhi during the last two years of her life—in particular, the growing hostility among Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims. He tells of the Sikhs’ demand for special status, their uprising against the Hindus in the Punjab, the government’s retaliation, the murder of Mrs. Gandhi by two of her Sikh bodyguards, and the anti-Sikh rioting that followed. He goes on to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding Rajiv’s election as his mother’s successor; the change in atmosphere from optimism to disenchantment as Rajiv’s government became mired in a kickback scandal; Rajiv’s loss of office to V. P. Singh in the 1989 election; and his murder by a secessionist Tamil group from Sri Lanka in 1991. Throughout, Mehta provides vivid details of aspects of Indian history and culture, such as the impact of the accident at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, the debate between the judiciary and Muslim clerics over economic support of divorced Muslim women, the peculiarities of the Indian telephone system, and the effect of television and movies on Hindu revivalism. His lucid and incisive book is mandatory reading for those who wish to understand India today.
Book 2 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. After studying in the United States, Mehta - blind since childhood - achieves his dream of enrolling at the University of Oxford: a place that has consumed his imagination ever since he was a small boy growing up under the British Raj. In Up at Oxford, Mehta recalls the nuances of his conversations, the range of his youthful emotions, and the sounds, smells, and tastes of university life. Along the way he draws memorable portraits of, among others, novelists, poets, scholars, and peers.
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