2020/12/17 by Durba Mukherjee, Sayan Chattopadhyay · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #South Asian Studies and Diaspora #Indian History and Philosophy #South Asian Cinema and Culture #Memoir #Homeland #Narrative #Indian subcontinent #History #Partition (number theory) #Politics #Hindi #Negotiation #Face (sociological concept) #Sociology #Gender studies #Literature #Political science #Ancient history #Law #Art #Social science #Art history
paper · doi:10.1080/14484528.2020.1855089
openalex publication_date 2020/12/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
This essay attempts to explore the autobiographical narratives by Ved Mehta that can be categorised as memoirs of return. Born before the partition (in 1947) of the Indian subcontinent, Mehta travelled to the West at fifteen and returned to India after a decade. This return remained significant since around it we find a cluster of memoirs (Face to Face, Walking the Indian Streets, Ledge between the Streams), which document some of the most complex narratives of an Indian return migrant’s attempt to negotiate between his notional homeland and his experience of being physically located within his country of origin. The central issue that I discuss here is ‘proprioceptive crisis’, when the body cannot comfortably fit within the surrounding space. For Mehta, his first experience of return was marked by an acute proprioceptive crisis, which was exacerbated by a sense of disillusionment about the Indian political and socio-economic scene. The essay will attempt to study the interplay between his early memories, which he used to construct his version of an Indian homeland while abroad, with the problematic experiences that marked his return and complicated his relationship with the physical space of India, which he once claimed to be his home.