One life of many metaphors & 12 autobiographies.

Ved Mehta's engrossing 12- part autobiography is being re- issued for Indian readers. Aprofile.

IF it hadn't been for the fresh- faced JoAn Johnstone from Seattle, USA, we probably wouldn't have had a rivetting 12- part autobiographical series, Continents of Exile , written over three decades, by a man who has used his life as a metaphor.

Ved Mehta, an archaeologist of the self, and a chronicler of our life and times for over five decades, is said to be the most brilliant blind writer after John Milton and Jorge Borges. But as the only Hindu at Pomona College in southern California in 1954 -- and a blind, shy, unathletic, car- less 20- year- old at that -- Mehta felt like a fish out of water. It was in JoAn, a fellow student, that he sought refuge -- by hiring her as an amanuensis to dictate his personal history to.

Though the two spent many hours together, their relationship remained strictly professional. Mehta's love for JoAn remained unrequited, but what he discovered in his love for her was his love for writing. His first book, Face to Face , came out three years later.

His raison d' E[logical not]tre now revealed to him, he went on to have a career with The New Yorker for 33 years, and write 26 books, including Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles ( 1977), where he wrote on those who had worked closely with the Mahatma, including the women who had taken part in his " sexual experiments". The cornerstone of Mehta's work -- Continents of Exile -- will now be reissued for the Indian audience by Roli Books.

Being in exile is something Mehta knows only too well. " I have always stuck out like a sore thumb. I have been an outsider all my life," he says on the phone from New York. " I have been blind since 4. I came to America at 15 for an education, when my knowledge and grasp of English was minimal. I was an outsider as an Indian in America. As a writer, I was an outsider to the commercial American civilisation. And as a writer, I have been an outsider to the great flurry of interest in Indian writing." Mehta is candid in admitting that while he has " got respectable reviews, my books didn't catch fire in terms of sales." He had a " terrible time" finding publishers, till Roli came along, to get his autobiographical omnibus -- adding up to over 1,265,000 words -- out into the market.

" The series is meant to be read in installments, but can be read independently.

I would be thrilled if people just read five pages," says Mehta. T HE serialised autobiography deals with Mehta's specific six worlds -- India, America, England, journalism, blindness and psychoanalysis. " Through particulars, we create resonances of the universal," says Mehta, calling the omnibus " ostensibly autobiographical". The first of the series, Daddyji ( 1972), is the portrait of his father -- a village boy born in Punjab who somehow managed to go to England to study and returned to join the public health department.

" It is actually the story of a villager making good, and of an ancient Hindu family from a village aspiring to enter the modern world," Mehta says.

Coaxed by his siblings to follow up a book on his father by one on his mother, Mehta wrote Mamaji ( 1979), the story of his shehari mother from Lahore, but by extension, that of a family trying to consolidate its place in the modern world.

Vedi ( 1982) started as a chapter, but grew into a book, based on Mehta's life in a blind school between 5 and 8 years of age. " I spent two years writing about three years of my childhood," says Mehta, adding that it is actually By Neha Tara Mehta One life of many metaphors & 12 autobiographies the story of schooling of blind children everywhere.

In 1998, Mehta wrote Remembering Mr Shawn's New Yorker , which tells the story of his relationship with his mentor, William Shawn, one- time editor of The New Yorker , and the story of the literary institution under him, till Shawn was dismissed in 1987, signaling the end of an era.

In All for Love ( 2001), Mehta delves deep into his disastrous trysts with love -- but also explores psychoanalysis, which he had to undergo in the 1970s after four failed relationships. Mehta married at 49 -- choosing to exchange vows with poet and scholar Linn Cary, the niece of a colleague at New Yorker whom he had known since she was 11.

The omnibus comes a full circle with The Red Letters in 2004 -- once again, based on his father.

" My father had a dalliance with a tribal girl when he was posted in Shimla," he says. " I got my father's permission to write about the letters exchanged between the two." Mehta approached the affair as a historical event, and the book is about an " intersection of British India and Indian India." Mehta's writing is extraordinary not only for its range and depth, but also for its visual imagery. It's something that spills into his personal life.

Fiercely independent throughout his career at The New Yorker , he'd walk the streets of New York unaided. He has Krishan Khanna and M. F. Husain adorning the walls of his home. " There are two ways you can deal with a handicap -- I could have spent my life teaching in a blind school or working in blind organisations.

But I was one of seven kids, and I always wanted live like my brothers and sisters," he says.

As for his original muse, JoAn, he wrote of his unfulfilled love for her only in 1989, in The Stolen Light -- his 18th book. Though he sent across a copy to her, she never got in touch with him. " My life is one continuous memory. Writers live in their heads. Whenever something happens to me -- it is banked in my memory, and has resonances," say Mehta, when asked about her.

" The worst fate for me would be to get Alzheimer's," he adds.

In Delhi at the end of the month after many years for the launch of Daddyji and Mamaji , Mehta is filled with horror at the thought that his memory of the city won't be the same because of what it has become. " The idea of Gurgaon fills me with horror. Delhi used to be an open city," he says.

Memories of walks in Lodi Gardens, which is next to his haunt in Delhi, the India International Centre, are by far more pleasant and laden with promise.

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