Ved Mehta (Ved Parkash Mehta) Biography

Indian journalistand autobiographical writer, born in Lahore, educated at Balliol College, Oxford and at Harvard. For many years he wrote for the New Yorker and in 1975 he became an American citizen. Walking the Indian Streets (1960; revised edition 1971) describes his return to India, together with his compatriot Dom Moraes. Mehta is best known for his autobiographical memoirs which include Face to Face (1957), Daddyji (1972), Mamaji (1979), Vedi (1982), and The Ledge Between the Streams (1984); as well as combining acute descriptions of everyday life in India, and shrewd analysis of Indian society, the memoirs also reveal with great pathos and humour the courageous confrontations with life of one who has been blind from childhood. Fly and the Fly-Bottle (1963) was based on articles in the New Yorker about his meetings with various British intellectuals, including I. Berlin, A. J. Ayer, and A. J. P. Taylor. His novel Delinquent Chacha (1967) is a satirical comedy set in London and Oxford. Up at Oxford (1993) is a memoir of his student days in the late 1950s. Other works include Portrait of India (1970), Mahatma Gandhi and his Apostles (1977), The New India (1978), Sound-Shadows of the New World (1986), Three Stories of the Raj (1986), The Stolen Light (1989), and Rajiv Gandhi and Rama's Kingdom (1994).