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Ved Mehta has now completed an extraordinary and grand achievement:
the series of eleven books, written (between other books) over
many years, called ‘Continents of Exile’. It is the history
of his remarkable life, told in a way that illuminates much of
life in general.
Ved was struck blind just before he was four, at a time when,
in India, blindness wars seen as punishment for sins in a past
life, which wiped out any prospect of a career or of marriage.
In defiance of this, he developed an almost obsessive determination
to behave as though he were not blind. This strategy, with its
conflicting, advantages and disadvantages, shaped his life almost
as much as did the strength of his intelligence, and has coloured
much of ‘Continents of Exile’. I shall discuss only the
last four of its books, but they all contain enough retrospective
material to put a newcomer in the picture.
It might be as well to start with All
for Love, because it opens with a brilliant account of
exactly how Ved developed his almost uncanny ability to behave
as though he were not blind. This prefaces the stories of four
passionate love affairs with women who could not have been characterised
more vividly by a writer who could see. Compelled by the force
of his will, none of the women ever mentioned his blindness, and
each of them ended by jilting him, leaving him in despair. But
the book ends with hope. Finally, painfully, he digs down to the
truth that grounding a relationship on fantasy is fatal. Not till
he has the courage to talk naturally about his blindness, and
the complexities behind his denial of it, can he hope to end his
loneliness: a shift of attitude which was to open up his way of
writing as well as his way of loving.
Dark Harbor (the
name of the village in which the story unfolds — though there
is something a little unsettling in the choice of title) ought
to be the happiest of these four books because it tells how Ved
did at last escape loneliness and start the family for which he
had longed. Naturally the reader rejoices on his behalf. Unfortunately,
before reaching this happiness, he had bought land on a remote
island off the coast of Maine and had had a house built on it.
The how and why of this perverse undertaking (he is no countryman
and couldn’t afford what he was doing) makes an intriguing story,
but he goes on to give a blow-by-blow account of the actual building.
Anyone who has had anything built knows the temptation to unload
the horrors and frustrations involved onto whoever will listen,
and usually learns to recognise the glaze of boredom which turns
the listener to stone. Ved Mehta didn’t. Glad though I am that
his house turned out well, and even gladder that he has a family
to enjoy it with him, this is not my favourite book in the series.
The Red Letters,
however, is thoroughly enjoyable. At the start of the series Ved
devoted one of its best books, Daddyji,
to his father. Now he circles back to this beloved influence,
and learns to his dismay that Auntie. Rasil, a woman he dimly
remembers as a friend of his mother’s, was his father’s great
love. They had — even now he can’t bring himself to say they
were lovers — ‘a dalliance’. Daddyji kept her letters
and before he died handed them over to Ved. And Ved gives them
to us. They are extravagantly romantic and, to European eyes;
strange. Auntie Rasil was seen as very ‘modern’, but she
writes thus: ‘God [she’s addressing her lover, not exclaiming],
good fortune of women, master of forsaken ones, how handsome you
are! ... It seems as if it is because of some curse in the past
life, that you have been born a mortal; otherwise your soul is
that of a divine rishi. I thank God greatly, who has made me worthy
of your feet [to bow down to]. ... Your devotee.’
Thus subservience, and Daddyji’s matter-of-fact acceptance of
it, are vivid illustrations of the extent to which sophisticated
middle-class life in British India was permeated by a more ancient
culture — as, indeed, is also apparent in many of the circumstances
of Ved’s childhood. But fascinating though the wider implications
of this story are, even more valuable is the way he deals with
the development, awkward and tentative, of intimacy between father
and son.
And now we come to a wonderful book, the fourth before last in
‘Continents of Exile’. It is Remembering
Mr Shawn’s ‘New Yorker’, which also means remembering
much of Ved Mehta’s career, since he wrote for that magazine for
thirty-three years. Always a very good writer, he seems to reach
the peaks of his achievement when he turns his attention outwards;
though this book also illustrates something deeply private to
him: the positive side of his defiance of his blindness, The writing
adventures he describes could not have covered anything like such
a wide field without it.
To get the education his intelligence demanded he had moved to
the USA, where he remained, earning his living by his pen. Shawn
accepted a story of his in 1959, taking him on as a staff writer
soon afterwards, and almost at once Ved started loving him as
a second, and perhaps even dearer, father. No editor has ever
nurtured his writers with greater sympathy and kindness than did
this shy, modest, scrupulous man whose moral probity was so fine
that his occasional absurdities failed to diminish respect. (Ved
once wrote how someone had deterred an attacker by grabbing his
testicles; Shawn changed ‘testicles’ to ‘thigh’.)
The affection was mutual. Shawn riot only encouraged Ved in his
writing with endless patience and sensitivity, he also welcomed
him into his family circle, which was equally valuable to a brave
but vulnerable young stranger.
The famously elaborate editing process insisted on by Shawn has
been mocked, but to me, a former publisher, it represents an ideal.
What luxury, to be able to afford such perfectionism, and how
wonderful for writers to be able to take that degree of respect
for granted!
The setup had its comic side — house writers quietly, or
not so quietly, going mad or getting drunk in their austere little
cells, while Shawn said mildly, ‘But he does write so beautifully’.
Ved is funny about that, and shrewd about other aspects of Shawn’s
New Yorker, but chiefly he is profoundly moving about ‘Mr
Shawn’. This is a delightfully detailed, entertaining and touching
account of a unique phenomenon: a great magazine under the direction
of a truly good man.
To anyone who has not yet encountered Ved Mehta’s work I would
say that even if you don’t embark on the whole of ‘Continents
of Exile’ (and it would be a pity not to) you really must
read Remembering Mr Shawn’s ‘New Yorker’.
To order these books, call 0870 429 6608
Buy
All for Love
Buy Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker
Buy
The Red Letters
Buy
Dark Harbor
All for
Love book preview
Remembering
Mr. Shawn's New Yorker book preview
The Red Letters
book preview
Dark Harbor book
preview
Read other reviews of
The Red Letters
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