Salman Rushdie
 I
met Ved through a television producer called Nick Fraser right
at the birth of Channel 4 back in 1980. At the time, Nick was
producing a half-hour talking-head slot called Opinion which,
in those more innocent days, allowed people to express vary extreme
views on mainstream television. I recorded a talk about racism
in Britain and then Ved went into the studio to record his talk.
Or maybe it was the other way round. Whichever, he heard what
I was saying and we talked afterwards.
As a young man, I had read him a lot. So I'd met Ved many times
through his writings much earlier than in that studio. It was
very interesting to meet him. I am surprised, in retrospect, that
we hadn't collided before. Those of us who are Indian writers
in the English language do tend to run into each other. We had
people in common, such as the Indian poet, Dom Moraes, who had
collaborated with Ved on a book called Walking the Indian
Streets. It was one of the first books of Ved's I had read.
I'd also read his Portrait of India which was important
just as I was starting to think of Midnight's Children.
Nick Fraser used to give dinners and assemble various people
who he was working with. After the recording, Ved and I met there.
What had struck me about Ved's writing, also struck me about him.
He is intensely visual. He tells you what colour things are. He
describes the natural world in great detail. Clearly, that is
a decision for a blind writer: to write as if you were not blind.
And he behaves like that when you're with him. I don't quite know
how he does it but he seems able to behave as if he can see.
For the past five years I have had a place in New York and spend
more time there than in London. And that has meant running in
to Ved, as he also lives there. Only recently, in fact, there
was a dinner given for the writer William Dalrymple in an incredibly
grand Upper East Side apartment. Ved was there. We spent a lot
of the evening talking.
I like his inner way. He has a mildness that I think has something
to do with blindness, and a quality of acceptance that it has
brought out in him. My instincts are more argumentative, but I
don't want to spend time with people like me.
We talk about many things. He feels his work is now being overlooked,
which makes me very sad after his long and distinguished career,
but I suppose the cycles of literary fashion are relentless and
happen to everyone. Some writers can be different from book to
book to suit the fashions, but others, like Ved, are themselves
and their books are an expression of that being in the world.
To change would, for him, be false.
Ved Mehta
I met Salman through a friend from New York. Nick Fraser was
a television producer and he had come back to London and commissioned
a series called Opinion on Channel 4. He rang and asked me to
do one of the slots. I'm really a writer who, rather like Plato,
believes opinions are false but I agreed to do a piece about being
blind in a sighted society. I came over and recorded the piece
and who should be in the next studio but Salman.
I listened to what he was saying and was absolutely amazed.
I had given a quiet, discreet piece, but he gave this fiery talk
about racism in England. Years before, I'd been an undergraduate
at Oxford and had been treated as a piece of exotica. I'd never
been discriminated against. Quite the contrary. But there was
Salman, shouting away about how awful this country was to its
immigrants.
I am shy by nature, but I did know Salman's then wife, Clarissa,
who was a lovely, willowy blonde woman who worked at my literary
agents. So I gently walked up to Salman and said, "I'm rather
astonished at your attack on the British for racism."
It was the beginning of what is not a friendship in the conventional
sense. It is a literary friendship. The link is through our work.
I like the company of other writers. I find it reassuring that
there are other people working in the vineyards, other people
bearing the cross.
From that very first meeting, though, I knew Salman and I were
born under different stars. I think he is much more connected
to the Indian subcontinent than I am. I was away for 17 years
at one point. His writing is very different from mine. I am a
strict grammarian. I write very finished prose. His is disjointed,
much more the contemporary type of writing. He is also a very
courageous writer, very provocative, which I admire but it is
not the kind of writing I could ever do. Salman is some kind of
literary phenomenon. I don't know anyone whose books have caused
so much anger and admiration.
I saw him recently in New York. We ended up standing together
for most of the evening at the edge of the party as it swirled
around us. I didn't know many people there. Salman rescued me.
When he wasn't standing he had his new wife on his lap. That is
not a usual behaviour at a party of that kind in New York but
he is very bold and he does what he feels like. He's not bothered
by what people think or say.
'Dark Harbor'
(£17.99), 'The Red
Letters' (£15.99) and 'Remembering
Mr Shawn's New Yorker' (£19.99), three volumes of Ved
Mehta's autobiographical sequence, are published by Sinclair-Stevenson
Ved Mehta takes
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on this Web site that is not directly written by him. |
