Face to Face by Ved Mehta: Autobiography of an extraordinary man who allowed neither blindness nor lack of means to stand in the way
Just finished reading "Face to Face", the first book by Ved Mehta that incidentally is also the first of his autobiography published by Penguin in 1957, when the author was just 23! Ved lost his eyesight following cerebral meningitis when he was just short of his fourth birthday. Having absolutely no recollection of sight, he adapts himself to a world where he would work a little extra hard to live like any of his siblings, participating in all their activities. So what if it involves kite-flying on the rooftops in pre-partition Lahore, or jumping from rooftop to rooftop. He also learns to cycle all by himself in the spacious grounds of the government quarters in Rawalpindi, where his father was posted as Director, Health Services, the first Indian to hold the post in the years leading to Independence. He even follows his elder sisters, without their knowledge, all the two kilometres to their school. And all this after being sent to a small institute for the blind in Dadar, B