Mehta, Gita 1943-

views updated

MEHTA, Gita 1943-

PERSONAL:

Born 1943, in Delhi, India; daughter of Biju Patnaik (a freedom fighter and political leader); married Ajai Singh Mehta (a publishing executive); children: one son. Education: Graduate of University of Bombay and Cambridge University.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Nan A. Talese, Doubleday Broadway Group, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER:

Author and journalist. Director of documentary films for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

WRITINGS:

Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East, Simon and Schuster (New York, NY), 1979, reprinted, Vintage Books (New York, NY), 1994.

Raj: A Novel, Simon and Schuster (New York, NY), 1989.

A River Sutra (stories), Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 1993.

Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of India, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 1997.

Contributor to periodicals, including Vogue.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gita Mehta is an Indian-born author who attended Cambridge University, where she met her husband, Ajai Singh "Sonny" Mehta. He later became president of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House, in New York, one of the three locations the couple and their son call home, the other two being London, England and Delhi, India.

Mehta was born in Delhi to a father who was a well-known freedom fighter and who later became the leader of the state of Orissa. Because of her family's strong political views, her grandmother wanted her named Joan of Arc, but the name given her can be interpreted to mean song of freedom. When Mehta was two weeks old, her father was imprisoned for his activities on behalf of Indian liberation, and when she turned three, their mother placed her and her brother in boarding school so that she could help her husband.

As Erin Soderberg noted in an article for Voices from the Gaps, the idea for Mehta's first book, Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East evolved from a 1979 publishing industry cocktail party she attended with her husband. Mehta, who was wearing a traditional sari, was accosted by a guest who insisted that she explain karma, and upon hearing her response, another guest urged her to put her ideas to paper. In three weeks' time, Mehta had written the satirical essays that comprise the volume, and which examine the 1960s influx of foreigners to India during the hippieera obsession with Indian mysticism.

Soderberg wrote that Mehta "blends humor with witty observations, constructing a book that presents her own impressions through the experiences of many."

Raj: A Novel reveals how life was lived under colonialism through the eyes of Jaya Singh, a highly born Indian woman. Soderberg felt that Jaya Singh was a strong female character, and she said of Mehta that "while her intelligence is obvious and her opinions clear, she is ultimately not interested in pressing her political impressions onto her reader, but presents historical facts with gentle persuasion in a beautifully woven tapestry."

A River Sutra is a novel that weaves half a dozen stories together, all of which have the sacred river Narmada as a common connection. The main character is a retired civil servant who wants only to spend his remaining years by the river, running a government-owned inn, but his peace is interrupted by a stream of pilgrims, including a monk, teacher, executive, courtesan, musician, and minstrel.

Indira Karamcheti wrote in Women's Review of Books that "all other things being equal, in many ways this is a satisfying book, full of lovely stories.… A unifying theme is announced by the title word 'sutra,' which the thoughtfully included glossary defines as 'literally, a thread or string. Also a term for literary forms, usually aphoristic in nature.' So Mehta, using the Narmada river as a narrative structuring device to thread these stories together, at the same time suggests that a philosophical or ethical principle can be pulled, perhaps in aphoristic form, from the river's symbolic presence in the stories." Love is the thread that runs through the tales that Karamcheti noted "are full of oriental philosophy and extravagance, physical passion and spiritual possession, lust and loot, beauty and booty, renunciation and titillation."

A Publishers Weekly contributor said that "Mehta does not avoid the controversies of life in her homeland, including the caste system and political/religious rivalries; rather, she willingly exposes its complexities."

Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of India is a collection of essays about India since its independence in 1947. Publishers Weekly writer Wendy Smith, who interviewed Mehta upon the publication of Snakes and Ladders, wrote that "among the essays are a moving portrait of a cooperative bank that enables women to buy themselves out of bonded labor and start their own businesses; a tribute to the 'faceless, nameless, all-enduring Indian voter' who has continued to believe in democracy despite notorious government corruption and Indira Gandhi's 1975 State of Emergency declaration (under which Mehta's father was again imprisoned); and a delicious evocation of India's colorful pavement booksellers and the kind of reading 'uninhibited by literary snobbisms' they promoted."

Mehta told Smith that she wrote many essays that she did not include in the volume "because they required too much pre-information. I wanted to make modern India accessible to Westerners and to a whole generation of Indians who have no idea what happened twenty-five years before they were born."

Mehta also talked with Smith about the troubles inherent in being married to "one of the most powerful people in international publishing," as Smith put it. "Imagine: you're working on a book, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez comes for a drink—you think, 'Does the world really need me?' And these nightmare sales figures for other writers; I hear Sonny say, 'Well, we've sold twelve million copies' of something, and I think, 'Oh my God!' That's why, when I'm really into a book, I go to London [where their son lives]."

In addition to her writing, Mehta has directed documentary films about India, the Bangladesh war, the Indo-Pakistan war that resulted in the creation of Bangladesh, and the elections in the former princely states. Her journalistic background lends itself to her writings, which explore the people, history, and culture of India. Soderberg concluded that Mehta "has the unique opportunity to collect the richness of living on three continents, and it is this rarity of perspective that gives her a uniquely witty and frank ability to define her vision of India through her work."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Literature of Developing Nations for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Literature of Developing Nations, Volume 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2000.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 1997, Donna Seaman, review of Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of India, p. 1477.

Economist, June 21, 1997, review of Snakes and Ladders, pp. R3-R4.

Forbes, June 16, 1997, Shailaja Neelakantan, review of Snakes and Ladders and interview with Gita Mehta, p. 284.

Globe & Mail, August 19, 1989, Valerie Fitzgerald, review of Raj: A Novel.

New Statesman & Society, June 18, 1993, Boyd Tonkin, review of A River Sutra, p. 41.

New York Times Book Review, June 22, 1989, review of Raj.

Publishers Weekly, March 29, 1993, review of A River Sutra, pp. 33-34; April 7, 1997, review of Snakes and Ladders, p. 82; May 12, 1997, Wendy Smith, "Gita Mehta: Making India Accessible" (interview), pp. 53-54.

Time, December 24, 1979, review of Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East.

Washington Post Book World, March 21, 1989, Florence King, review of Raj.

Women's Review of Books, January, 1994, Indira Karamcheti, review of A River Sutra, pp. 20-21.