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Ved Mehta was just 15 when, in 1949, he made what must have been
the most daunting trip of his life. Blind, shy and traveling alone,
he made his way from his home in India to America; where he would
get the specialized education he needed. But he was bright and
studious, and in time furthered his studies at Oxford and Harvard
universities, wrote numerous acclaimed books, and for over three
decades held down a day job as a staff writer on The New Yorker
magazine.
The most profound journey he ever made, however, took place
in 1970 when, with the help of a psychotherapist, he embarked
on a long and painful journey into his own interior. It's that
traumatizing self-exploration which has inspired this book, a
warts-and-all account of the author's four failed love affairs
and their aftermath. It is an uncharacteristic laying bare of
his soul, he admits in the preface, but a necessary part of his
recovery from chronic unhappiness.
All Ved Mehta ever wanted was to fall in love and live happily
ever after, but the great love affair-the one that would be all-consuming
and end happily ever after-eluded him time and again. Eventually,
in an effort to understand the downward trajectory of his romantic
relationships and the crushing loneliness he experienced when
they ended, he began the first of several years of analytical
sessions on the couch of a Hungarian doctor by the name of Bak.
Mehta just wanted his broken heart mended, but Dr. Bak helped
him decode the past and understand the undeniable significance
of his blindness. The writer, it transpired, had ignored his handicap
to such an extent that he had never even acknowledged that he
was blind to the women he loved; yet like the fracture lines of
a cracked mirror; its ramifications had spread right across the
surface of his life.
Through twice-weekly psychotherapy over the course of four years,
a gradual peeling back of his protective layers began, leaving
him feeling at times; like a skinned rabbit. The process was slow
and painful, and Mehta writes that the sessions could be so overwhelming
that sometimes they felt akin to the nightmares of Faust, the
trials of Ulysses, and the Stations of the Cross.
As recounted in the book, Dr. Bak's hamfisted analysis must
have been hard to take at times, but Mehta comes across as nothing
if not a patient man. Here, for instance, is what Bak had to say
when his patient admitted discarding the useful but stigmatizing
white stick: "Sticks represent male potency, male prowess.
They're elegant. You threw away your stick. Although consciously
you wanted to find a girl, unconsciously you wanted to be a girl."
Hell's teeth! But while this may sound like utter psychopiffle,
the doctor's clumsy prodding eventually worked for the patient,
who says that it changed his life and enabled him to achieve the
circumstances that gives this book its happy ending.
There is no epiphanous moment when all becomes clear; the four
significant relationships are unraveled slowly, and for me that
is the most interesting part of this hugely absorbing book. The
author never juices up an anecdote, never resorts to humor to
soften the blows; all the while he just writes in the precise
prose style he perfected while on The New Yorker.
I'm amazed and impressed that anyone, let alone this very reserved
man, is prepared to reveal their flawed self and past humiliations
so publicly. In his preface, he says two of the reasons for this
trip into unchartered territory were:".... A wish to get
at the truth of exactly what happened, and to understand the effect
of love on one's sense of self." He does both, and the journey
is riveting.
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