Walking the Indian Streets

After ten years of study in England and America, Ved Mehta revisited his home in India in the summer of 1959. In this book he gives a sensitive and vivid account—sometimes deeply serious, sometimes very funny—of his attempt to reidentify himself first with his family, then with the military and civil leaders of the Indian state. He is joined by his great friend from Oxford, the poet Dom Moraes, and together they spend a carefree month meeting Indian writers and poets, enjoying the social life of New Delhi, Nepal, and Calcutta, and speaking at Indian universities. Ved Mehta then returns alone to Delhi to reflect on what he has seen and heard, to make an ancestral pilgrimage to Haridwar, and—the climax of his visit home—to meet Nehru.

Ved Mehta’s first book, Face to Face, was widely acclaimed as a brilliant and moving piece of autobiographical writing, and Walking the Indian Streets and Portrait of India have confirmed his reputation as one of the most interesting writers to emerge from postwar India.Walking the Indian Streets was first published here in 1961, and this is a new, revised edition.