English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

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.

‘Walking the Indian Streets’: Analysing Ved Mehta’s Memoirs of Return