Face to Face
This is the valiant autobiography of a blind young Hindu who found in America the education and liberation which he could not find in India. Blinded by meningitis at the age of three, Ved Mehta never lost his aspiration for a full and vigorous life. His father was a Western-trained doctor who ranked high in the Indian Civil Service, and before he was thirteen Ved had been trained to read Braille at a rehabilitation center for Indian veterans.
Ved’s boyhood was a time of loneliness in which his courage was constantly tested. India makes little provision for the education of the blind, and his inability to keep pace with his brothers and sisters increased his determination to be independent. He learned some English at home, and for the rest, he learned by instinct—learned to ride a bicycle after many bumps and, when the elders were not looking, to run over the roofs of the family compound flying kites.
Ved shared the fears of the family clan when they were driven from their homes by the Muslim uprisings of 1947. The persecutions of this time came dangerously close to Ved’s family, and the experience steeled the boy’s resolve to educate himself for an active part in the rehabilitation of his country.
The United States was his brightest hope, and in his broken English he typed out letters to every American institution for the blind. Over thirty rejected his appeal, but the Arkansas School for the Blind accepted him, and alone, at the age of fifteen, Ved set off on the long flight to America. Since he had never used a knife and fork, he was embarrassed to eat on the plane and subsisted for forty-eight hours on orange juice, until he was met at Idlewild Airport by the couple who were to befriend him during his first month in this country.
In Arkansas, under the encouragement and instruction of Mr. Woolly, Ved learned to move with a new freedom, and there he also perfected his knowledge of English. He won a scholarship to Pomona College, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. There he found that American undergraduates make friends with no thought of color. One summer in Arkansas he worked in an ice-cream plant, and learned to dive in a municipal swimming pool. During a college vacation he dictated the opening chapters of this book; and he also, when the spirit moved him, traveled around the country, crossing the continent fourteen times, sometimes thumbing his way. His appreciation of this country, which he sums up at the close of the American section, is as moving a tribute as any foreigner has written.
At the age of twenty-three, Ved had a scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford, to familiarize himself with English history and acquire that knowledge which will qualify him as he hopes, for leadership in his own country. He is a staff writer on The New Yorker.
This is a rich and varied book, full of life and color and vigor. The personality of the author is the force that lifts it skyward. Brilliant, modest, warm, sensitive and full of humor, he sees the world—whether India or America or the lands between—with a vivid perception that is granted to very few.