The Lives of Ved Mehta by Bernard McGouran, from the Winter 1997 issue. In his foreword to The Ledge Between the Streams, Ved Mehta says, "I sometimes feel I am leading two lives-the life I'm remembering and interpreting, and my ordinary day-to-day life." The calamities of a life do not often afford the time for reflection, and however much one may strive to live in the moment, the meaning of a moment seldom becomes clear until it is seen from a distance. Thankfully, most of us do not live our lives in the headlines, where meaning is assigned by the minute. For most of us, to live is to relive, and in the five volumes of his memoir - Daddyji, Mamaji, Vedi, The Ledge Between the Streams and Sound Shadows of the New World-Mehta vividly relives his extraordinary life. With a near holistic memory, he rebuilds the vanished world of Mehta Gulli, his family's compound in Lahore, and recreates with crystalline detail life in an upper-caste Hindu family before and after the partitioning of India in 1947. Taken as a whole, the series is a family saga, as sweeping as anything found in Galsworthy, a kitchen sink account of life in a large and loving Indian family. But what makes the series special is Mehta's unique perception of the events in his life. Blinded at the age of four by meningitis, Mehta learns to maneuver through the world with the help of what he calls his "facial vision." Almost a kind of second sight, this profound way of seeing informs the whole of this remarkable memoir. With an acute grasp of the telling detail, Mehta brings to life in short, deft strokes the many characters who populated his childhood. He is a master of the small moment, and his recollections of his idyllic boyhood range from tragedy to high adventure to Chaplinesque comedy. He recalls the death of his favorite uncle, a flyer in the RAF, whose death he is told must be kept secret from his grandmother. He recalls flying kites from the rooftops of Mehta Gulli, jumping from roof to roof with his brothers and sisters and cousins, oblivious of the danger, and keeping up as if he had "two good eyes." Undaunted by his blindness, and trusting to his facial vision, he recalls finding and repairing a bicycle and teaching himself to ride. Every day, I would ram the bicycle into the walls or up the verandah stairs and into the columns. Every day, I would bang into flower-pots, stray watering cans, lawn chairs, tables-whatever happened to be in place or out of place. Every day, I would scrape or bruise my knees and shins, hands and elbows. But every time, I would pick myself up, ignore my bruises and scratches, fix my bicycle as best I could, and be off again. This same indomitable spirit is what fires the young Mehta's desire to learn, to gain the same education as his sighted brothers and sisters. As it was for his father, learning is a lifelong passion for Mehta, but for a blind boy in India in the 1940s, education was at best haphazard. Vedi, the third book in the series, tells of his experiences in the Dadar School in Bombay, an orphanage that, at the time, was the only elementary school for the blind in India. It is at the Dadar School that Mehta first grasps the meaning of the caste system. He is the only student with shoes on his feet, and even his teachers treat the "young sahib" with deference. From there he moves to the Emerson Institute, a trade school for the blind, and finally, at 13, when there are no other educational opportunities left open to him, he moves to the St. Dunstan's Hostel for the War Blind, a training center for veterans blinded in the war. At St. Dunstan's, Mehta is the only civilian, and the only boy. He shares a barracks with an embittered group of mostly illiterate men whose lives have been shattered by their blindness. While St. Dunstan's tries to teach these men the rudiments of living with their affliction, it teaches Mehta Braille, typing, and a boundless empathy for the millions of his countrymen who have been less favorably handled by the world. But, like the sad men in his barracks, Mehta's life is interrupted at almost every turn by the arbitrary encroachments of the 20th century. He is removed from Dadar because of the second world war, and from Emerson because of the riots in Lahore that precede Partition. It is during this time, however, that he makes his first real sighted friend. Sohan, an idealistic Hindu rebel, a hotheaded boy, introduces Mehta to the world of politics, igniting in him another lifelong passion. Ignoring Mehta's blindness, he brings him to secret late-night meetings, introducing him to the world beyond the gulli, and instills in him a fighting spirit. When the mobs rage through Mehta Gulli, and Mehta is sent to hide in a bunker with his mother and sisters, he carries with him a concealed sword, a gift from Sohan, and a symbol of his pride. Fortunately, he never has to use the sword, but in 1947 he is forced to flee with his family to Bombay, leaving behind forever his beloved Mehta Gulli and, profoundly worse, the body of Sohan, who is murdered by Muslim extremists. In his chronicle of these turbulent times, Mehta includes several fly-on-the-wall encounters with some of the notable names of the day-Ghandi, Mountbatten, Nehru-but the figure who looms the largest throughout is that of Amolak Ram Mehta, Ved's father. Mehta Sr.'s story is told in Daddyji, and it is here we see the evolution of the character that will play such a prominent role in the shaping of the author's own. The eldest son of his family, Amolak Ram puts himself through medical school in England and the US while supporting his younger brothers and sisters at home. An avid sportsman, an inveterate-but successful-gambler, and a lover of Urdu poetry, Mehta Sr. bears the weight of his familial responsibility without complaint. Much like the author's mother, whose very different story is told in Mamaji, he finds joy in responsibility, and with her creates for his children a home of great and exuberant warmth. With great affection and a faultless ear, Mehta records the "dinner table school" conducted each night by his father, where the family discusses religion and science, Hindus and Muslims, and India and Pakistan, the two solitudes that would define and shape his life. It is in these moments that the reader truly grasps Mehta's meaning about living two lives. Here, the remembered life is as vivid as the daily life, and though the world he recalls from his study in New York is remote in time and ceases to exist in space, it is far from gone. by Bernard McGouran, from the Winter 1997 issue. © 2000 Studio Q Int'l Inc./Urban Mozaik Magazine™ All rights reserved. The images and text on this website cannot be reproduced in part or in whole without written permission from Urban Mozaik Magazine.
		Blinded at the age of four by meningitis, Mehta learns to maneuver through the world with the help of what he calls his "facial vision."
		Ignoring Mehta's blindness, he brings him to secret late-night meetings, introducing him to the world beyond the gulli, and instills in him a fighting spirit.