. with dustjacket, 1984, slight foxing to page edges
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Steadily, quietly, Mehta keeps adding to his unique family/personal history - which began in earnest with parental studies (Daddyji, Mamaji) and turned to Mehta himself in Vedi (1982): the chronicle of his five years in a special school after being blinded by meningitis at age four. Now, removed from the school because of health problems, little Vedi must go without an education - living at home with his loving, cultured, oddly neglectful family. (No one read to him.) But "home" keeps shifting, as public-health official Daddyji is moved from Lahore to Rawalpindi to a hill-station, then back to Lahore. Vedi is fearful yet reckless, determined to ride a bicycle: "Mamah felt that my blindness was a curse on her for something she had done in a previous incarnation. . . I felt that blindness was a terrible impediment, and that if only I exerted myself, and did everything my big sisters and big brother did, I could somehow become exactly like them." He develops his sound/feel "vision," yearns for education, settles for visits from a seedy Indian-music master: Daddyji suggests music as "solace," a singing career as the only viable one for a blind man. Then, at last, Vedi argues his way into a makeshift little Lahore school for blind children - with a Muslim teacher who tells lurid stories about houris and venereal disease, a principal who insists on Vedi's nonstop knitting. In the late 1940s, however, even Vedi's attention shifts to the escalating Muslim/Hindu tensions in Lahore: distant sounds of riots, fires; imminent fear of mob attack; sleeping with a knife under his pillow; flight, after the Partition violence erupts, to Bombay, where the children seek out trouble. ("In Lahore we had got so used to living, with a sense of danger that in Bombay we couldn't hear to live without it.") There, again, the question arises: what to do with Vedi, who still hasn't even learned Braille? And the strange answer is St. Dunstan's in Dehra Dun - a top training center for blinded soldiers, where the "little civilian fellow" finally gets his basic reading/writing skills, his first English. . . and then goes on, after heart-catching setbacks, to gain admission to an Arkansas school, "the first Indian blind boy ever to go to America for education." With rich backgrounds of nation and family: the most personally compelling of the Mehta memoirs - fired by the hunger for learning. (Kirkus Reviews)
The author describes his adolescence in India during the forties and tells how he adjusted to his blindness and learned Braille, English, bicycling, typing, roller skating, and horseback riding.
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Seller: WorldofBooks, Goring-By-Sea, WS, United Kingdom
Hardback. Condition: Fair. A readable copy of the book which may include some defects such as highlighting and notes. Cover and pages may be creased and show discolouration. Seller Inventory # GOR004205363
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Seller: WorldofBooks, Goring-By-Sea, WS, United Kingdom
Hardback. Condition: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR006399344
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Seller: Beach Hut Books, Lingfield, United Kingdom
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Dustwrapper, now protected, has one 1/2" closed tear. Seller Inventory # 031864
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Seller: Lazarus Books Limited, Blackpool, LANCS, United Kingdom
Cloth Bound Boards. Condition: Very Good+. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. 1984 first edition. Size large thick octavo, 8.25" tall, 525 pages. Brown cloth covered boards with bronze gilt titles to the spine, red end-papers, with the dust jacket. Book condition very good plus, corners and spine ends slightly rubbed10 edge of front boards and spine slightly faded, contents are very clean. Dust jacket condition very good, edges with a few nicks and two tears without loss to upper edge, corners and spine ends chipped, 6cm tear on rear panel diagonally out from inner corner, price has been clipped. The fourth in an autobiographical series by this internationally renowned Indian author set between 1940-1949. Seller Inventory # 018025
Quantity: 1 available