Sound Shadows of the New World by Ved Mehta (review)

176 Shorter Book Reviews reviewing the cultural and economic geography of eastern North America to discover the reasons the central colonies came together in federation while those to the north and south remained outside. And so he has set the stage for volume 2. Meinig knows that good writing and good illustrations attract readers and ' help make a case. He has done his work well: the prose is attractive, the diagrams helpful, the contemporary prints well-chosen, and the brilliant cartography deserves special mention. Yet Atlantic America cannot be all things to all readers, and some will not find what they are looking for. Inabook already long Meinig has given little space to discussions of land use, to the workings of local economies, to the life and role of the colonial towns. His mterests, and the approach to historical geography he prefers, raise questions about how he will deal with the urban and industrial United States of more recent times. While we await the answers, we have the comfort of knowing that the trilogy is off to a very good start. J.H. Galloway Department of Geograph}, University of Toronto Ved Mehta. SoundShadowsoftheNew World. New York: W.W. Norton, 1985 430 pp. I liked, very much, Ved Mehta's Portrait of India, a wonderfully diverse: picture of his native country which he left in 1949 to come to the United States. I cannot say the same for his account of that first sojourn in North America., Sound Shadows of the New World. The title is full of promises unfulfilled, fm the Arkansas of the 1950s to which he came remains muted, or sketch}. compared to his canvases showing us the peoples of the subcontinent. This11 really too bad for the mysteries of Little Rock are surely as in need of revelation as those of New Delhi. Perhaps part of the problem was his age. He was only fifteen when he turneil up on the doorstep of the neat Greek Revival brick box in the soft piney woodi which was the Arkansas School for the Blind. It was the only institution whid admitted him, most of the rest apparently assuming that cultural maladjustmenl on top of his physical handicap would be too much. Whether for him or them1 1 unclear. Blind since the age of four as a result of meningitis, he was lovingly,11, haphazardly, prepared for his trip by his father, a doctor who thought Amern. "God's Own Country.'' Ved arrived not knowing the use of fork or knifebc1 '. carrying boxes of carefully wrapped ivory trinkets, most of which were stolen! on arrival in New York. They were meant to help pay his school fees SufferinE ShorterBook Reviews 177 theusual culture shock inherent in any such trip, he eventually unraveled the wondersof Coca Cola, underpants, beef eating and double beds. Only rarely mistakenfor a ''Nigra'' he went on to become a local schoolboy celebrity, fetedin the Arkansas Democrat, addressing Methodist Ladies Clubs on the menaceof communism in India. Hesurvives both an attempted salvation by a Southern Baptist and his first date-a painful pleasure for a well brought up Hindu youth. Packing popsicles atthe local ice cream factory for a summer is a liberation. Joining the Boys' Cluband making a high dive into what he was sure was a polio infected pool wasa triumph. Many of these events were surrounded by ordinary teenage angst,compounded by his anxiety about fitting in with the other pupils and staffat the school. Desperately homesick much of the time, he tried to keep his 'Indianess' in thebackground, careful who read his letters from his family, manfuly eating hisspaghetti and meatballs, listening to his collection of Indian music in a broomcloset converted into a private study. It was here he communed with the outsideworld via the radio; his hero was journalist Edward R. Murrow. He recordsin his diary entry for January I, 1952, that he is confident he can write a booksomeday. Allof these activities were carried on quite independent of his school work. Whilehe took the standard courses from 'civics' to 'shop,' what he really seemsto have learned in Arkansas was how to be blind. Brought up among sightedpeople in India, he...