When a person you have always liked and idolized writes a
book, and not just any book but an autobiography, you are perhaps not the best
critic. Having said that, I admit I picked up Vinod Mehta’s memoirs, Lucknow
Boy, with a bounce in my step and with a special beat in my heart. As I
opened the book and read through the first paragraph, Mehtaji from Lucknow did
it again. I was hooked as I am with every bit of text he writes.
Lucknow Boy is a book that will touch a chord in many of us
who started their journalistic or publishing careers in the Delhi of the 1990s,
when email had just come in. It will also give us a glimpse of Vinod Mehta, the
boy who had come to India from Pakistan, who grew up in Lucknow, became an adult
in London and the man who was the charismatic editor of Debonair. He gives us
stories and reasons behind why and how he set up and then left (or had to
leave) the various other publications like the Sunday Observer, Indian Post,
The Independent and The Pioneer. A large section is obviously on Outlook. This
book is not just a tale about a person, it is a story of the times, the
changing political scenarios of the world and the various events that shaped
him into who he is.
Lucknow Boy is nothing if not honest. It is, as Pankaj
mishra says, “a book that ought to be savoured rather than quickly swallowed”.
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