![]() ![]() It seems to me that a wonderful book is waiting to be written about the Indians who have enriched the literary and artistic life of New York. Other books explain how London was made less insular by talented individuals fleeing Hitler and Stalin - such as the writers Arthur Koestler, Sebastian Haffner, and George Mikes the historians EH Gombrich and Eric Hobsbawm the publishers Andre Deutsch and George Weidenfeld. Books have been written on how American writers (from Ernest Hemingway and Richard Wright on to James Baldwin and Edmund White) did some of their best work in Paris. I could not believe that the man was actually blind.There is a rich literature on how the culture of modern cities has been nourished by immigrants from other countries. What surprised me was the speed and confidence with which he rushed up and down the stairs. We chatted about Lahore, and the book that he was then working on. In London's Holland Park Reginald Massey, left, chats with fellow Lahore born writer Ved Mehta. When he was in London many years ago, I went to meet him at Holland Park. I was an avid reader of Mehta's fiction and non-fiction. His wife Linn Cary Mehta is descended from the prolific writer James Fenimore Cooper best known for his masterpiece The Last of the Mohicans. He said that he could not live in India simply because he did not entertain the idea of living in an anarchy. He spoke his mind during the 2014 Jaipur Literary Festival. Mehta has written on Indian subjects, and follows Indian politics and the shenanigans of India's leaders. As a staff writer at The New Yorker, from 1961 till 1994, he exercised immense influence. It was an account of his struggles and his experiences as a blind man. ![]() In 1957, when he was 23, Mehta published his first book Face to Face. ![]() (Rose later became Father Seraphim Rose, a Russian Orthodox hieromonk and a leading figure of the Orthodox Church in USA.)Īfter Pomona, Mehta went to Balliol College, Oxford and then to Harvard. Mehta wrote that his friend's readings were so clear that it seemed as if he was "explaining things". Fortunately, his friend Eugene Rose volunteered to help. Since few books were then published in Braille he needed a fellow student who could read the text books to him. From there he went to Pomona College in California, a liberal arts institution with a high reputation. In 1949, Ved was sent to the Arkansas School for the Blind. His father, a doctor, was aware that his son had no future in India since most people in India regarded blindness as a curse, a divine retribution for some great sin or crime committed in a past life. Ved Mehta is a celebrated writer, and a man who overcame severe disability by sheer will power.īorn in Lahore in 1934, at the age of four he was blinded by cerebrospinal meningitis. A member of the Society of Authors, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His latest book is Shaheed Bhagat Singh and the Forgotten Indian Martyrs, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi. A former London journalist, he now lives in Mid Wales with his actor wife Jamila. He writes books on various subjects pertaining to South Asia. ![]() Reginald was born in Lahore before Partition. ![]()
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