![]() ![]() Mehta composed all of his work orally, dictating long swaths to an assistant, who read them back again and again for him to polish until the work shone like a mirror. The recipient of a MacArthur Foundation ‘genius grant’ in 1982, Mehta was long praised by critics for his forthright, luminous prose - with its “informal elegance, diamond clarity and hypnotic power,” as The Sunday Herald of Glasgow put it in a 2005 profile, the New York Times reported on Sunday. He also added that, “He writes about serious matters without solemnity, about scholarly matters without pedantry, about abstruse matters without obscurity”. “Daddyji” was the first installment in what was to become a 12-volume series of autobiographical works, known collectively as “Continents of Exile.” “Ved Mehta has established himself as one of the magazine’s most imposing figures,” The New Yorker’s storied editor William Shawn, who hired him as a staff writer in 1961, told The New York Times in 1982. ![]() “I felt that blindness was a terrible impediment, and that if only I exerted myself, and did everything my big sisters and big brother did, I could somehow become exactly like them,” he wrote.īest known for his 12-volume memoir, which focused on the troubled modern history of India and his early struggles with blindness, Mehta’s 24 books included volumes of reportage on India, among them “Walking the Indian Streets” (1960), “Portrait of India” (1970) and “Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles” (1977), as well as explorations of philosophy, theology and linguistics. He was determined to apprehend the world around him with maximal accuracy and to describe it as best he could. He, however, did not let his impairment get in the way of a flourishing career or stop him from showcasing his literary prowess to the world. “Mehta, a writer for The New Yorker for more than thirty years, died at the age of eighty-six, on Saturday morning,” it said on Sunday.īorn in pre-partition Lahore to a well-off Punjabi family in 1934, Mehta lost his eyesight when he was three years old to meningitis. The New Yorker magazine, where he had been a staff writer for 33 years, reported that Mehta died on Saturday, 09 th January. aglow with illuminating detail.Celebrated Indian-American novelist Ved Mehta, who overcame blindness and became widely known as the 20th-century writer most responsible for introducing American readers to India, has died at his home in New York at the age of 86. Mehta has given us a sensitive view of India and a personalized experience of the meaning of Mahatma Gandhi."-Edward S. touches much more than the personality of Gandhi, for it deals with the more general issue of the evolution and maintenance of a cultural symbol. "Meticulously researched, passionately felt, elegantly written."-Max Lerner A very readable account, dotted with sharply etched portraits."-Paul Johnson, New York Times ![]() "A remarkable examination of the life and work of a human being who has been extolled around the world as one of the greatest souls of all time. Through interviewing disciples of Gandhi in five countries, Mehta reconstructs in precise detail Gandhi's daily routine, recounts the story of his life, and presents the beliefs and practices of his "apostles." Mehta's book, widely praised when it was first published in 1977, is a biographical portrait of Gandhi unlike any other. In this book, the renowned author Ved Mehta brings Gandhi to life in all his holiness and humanness, shedding light on his principles and his purposes, his ideas and his actions. ![]()
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