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In "The Red Letters," the 11th and final book of Ved
Mehta's family history, "Continents of Exile," the author
struggles to come to terms with his father's two-year affair in
the early 1930s with a close family friend, Auntie Rasil. "This
series," writes Mehta in an afterword, "is predicated
on the notion that the more particular a story, the more universal
it is."
This story begins with a 1967 dinner party in Mehta's one-bedroom
New York apartment for his parents, who were visiting from India.
Mehta invited his editor, the legendary New Yorker editor William
Shawn ("my father was worldly, Mr. Shawn was otherworldly"),
and a few close friends. Mid-party, Mehta's father burst into
tears and excused himself to the other room for the duration of
the evening. Mehta later heard from another guest that his father
had felt guilty about the causes of his son's blindness.
Then, in the course of helping his father write a novel, Mehta
learns of the affair with his mother's closest friend. Over the
course of several years, father and son discuss the relationship;
Mehta senior gives his son the packet of love letters (Red Letters),
which he has saved for 40 years.
The affair shakes the foundations of Mehta's carefully constructed
world, from his ideas about arranged marriage and his understanding
of his mother's many moods to his own sense of himself as a stiff,
closed person (compared with his father). It also raises his old
dilemma: "loyalty to my family" versus "loyalty
to my craft, to which any kind of censorship is anathema."
The author sacrifices himself on the altar of his memoirs; he
emerges as the least likable, least striking character. The heroic
literary figures are Mehta's long-suffering, uneducated but devoted
mother; his charming, human, storytelling father; and his Auntie
Rasil, a hill girl abused by her husband and stepson.
Mehta stands alone, a little shabby, a little insecure, a confused
child feeding on the lives of his ancestors. He exits stage left,
and we, the audience, are certain that he planned it all, down
to our very judgments about his character. Surely there must be
more.
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