In 1956, when he was 22 and about to go up to Oxford, Ved Mehta finished an autobiography, Face to Face: a provisional one, naturally, under the circumstances. In 1972, he published Daddyji, a life of his father. Daddyji was born circa 1895, but the book reaches back to the birth of the grandfather, and beyond: though the beyond is rather shadowy. 'By extension', it was 'the story of an ancient Hindu family from an Indian village, aspiring to enter the modern world'.

LRB 19 June 1980 | PDF Download