Esquire, July 1988, p. 61.
Blindsided
A
veteran New York
journalist was convinced that Ved Mehta, the blind Indian writer, was not
really blind at all. Having spotted Mehta sitting stiffly on the couch at a
party at Mike Nichols's, he stationed himself in front of the man, who was
stealing the cashews from a bowl of mixed nuts. The journalist waved his hands
back and forth at the man, started making faces. The guests -- Renata Adler and
Penelope Gilliatt among them -- were aghast. But the Indian stared straight
ahead, impassive. The journalist shrugged. He had had his doubts, he announced,
but was now convinced that Mehta was indeed blind.
"That
may be so," replied one guest, "but that man on the couch is V.S.
Naipaul."
Spy, September 1989, p. 111.
Slaves of the New Yorker
By
Jennet Conant
[...]
The most intense Ved skeptics are not fully convinced that anyone could
produce such detailed visual passages if he were actually blind. [...] In one
often-told incident, a young writer became obsessed with the notion that Ved
could, in fact, see. At a literary function, the story goes, the young writer
spotted a dapper Indian gentleman, walked directly over and started making
extraordinary faces and obscene gestures at him. The mortified hostess, as she
dragged the young writer away, asked, "What in God's name were you doing
to V.S. Naipaul?" [...]
Paul
Theroux, Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship
Across Five Continents (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), pp. 278-9.
There
was a story I never asked Vidia to verify -- didn't dare ask, because I wanted
it to be true. If it was not true, it ought to have been.
Ved
Mehta is a distinguished Indian writer. [...] Ved Mehta is also famously blind.
A certain New Yorker doubted his blindness. Seeing Mehta at a New York party, speaking to a group of
attentive people, holding court, the man decided to test it. He had always been
skeptical that Mehta was totally blind, since in his writing he minutely
described people's faces and wrote about the nuances of color and texture with
elaborate subtlety, making precise distinctions.
The
man crept over to where Mehta was sitting, and as the writer continued to
speak, the doubting man began making faces at him. He leaned over and waved his
hands at Ved Mehta's eyes. He thumbed his nose at Ved Mehta. He wagged his
fingers in Ved Mehta's face.
Still,
Mehta went on speaking, calmly and in perfectly enunciated sentences, never
faltering in his expansive monologue.
The
man made a last attempt: he put his own face a foot away and stuck his tongue
out. But Mehta spoke without a pause, as if the man did not exist.
Realizing
how wrong he had been, the man felt uncomfortable and wanted to go home.
Leaving the party, he said to the hostess, "I had always thought Ved Mehta
was faking his blindness, or at least exaggerating. I am now convinced that Ved
Mehta is blind."
"That's
not Ved Mehta," the hostess said. "It's V. S. Naipaul."
