Rajiv Gandhi and Rama's Kingdom

Ved Parkash Mehta was an America writer and journalist. He was born in Lahore, India on March 21, 1934. He went blind at the age of three. At 15, he came to the United States to attend a school for the blind in Arkansas. He later attended Pomona College in Southern California, graduating in 1956. He earned a second bachelor's degree in modern history from Balliol College, Oxford. He received his master's degree from Harvard in 1961. He became a U. S. citizen in the 1975.

He wrote numerous articles on life in 20th-century India. His first book was Face to Face (1957). But he was best-known work was a 12-volume memoir that also illuminated the history of India. They were collectively known as, Continents of Exile. The first volume was Daddyji (1972). The last book in the series, The Red Letters, was published in 2004. His other books included Walking the Indian Streets; The Fly and the Fly-Bottle: Encounters with British Intellectuals (1963); The New Theologian (1966); John is Easy to Please (1971); Delinquent Chacha (1967); and Remembering Mr. Shawn's New York: The Invisible Art of Editing (1998).

He worked for more than thirty years at The New Yorker magazine. He was hired as a staff writer in 1961 and remained there until 1994. After leaving The New Yorker, he taught at Yale, Vassar, New York University, and elsewhere. He also continued to write.

His work was critically acclaimed. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971 and 1977. In 1982, he received the MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." In 2009, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was given an honorary degree from Pomona College, Bard College, Williams College, The University of Stirling, and Bowdoin College.

Ved Mehta died at his home in Manhattan on January 9, 2021 at the age of 86.

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