These are the literary theorist Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, the historian Partha Chatterjee, and the economist Jagdish Bhagwati. Among those who have name recognition outside their field of academic specialisation, perhaps three stand out. Many or most would have Indians on their faculty. Wikipedia lists some 140 universities and colleges in New York. But before she became a celebrated chef and writer on food she was a successful actor - performing on theatre and in film, where she worked closely with a New Yorker originally from Mumbai, Ismail Merchant, the producer of (among other films) ‘Remains of the Day’ and ‘Howards End’. Jaffrey is now better known as someone, who - through television and books - has made Indian (more particularly North Indian) cooking better known in the West. Stephen’s College, she at Miranda House.Ī ‘Manhattan Mirandian’ of an earlier generation is the ageless Madhur Jaffrey. Nair, who now lives in New York, was an almost exact contemporary of Ghosh at the University of Delhi, where he studied at St. Another writer who, for many years, has maintained a home in Brooklyn is the gifted Amitav Ghosh, author of novels set in Burma, Egypt, China and the Sunderbans.Ī film-maker whose oeuvre is likewise varied is Mira Nair, her work also set in different continents and time periods. The last Mehta I shall mention is 20 years younger than Gita - this is Suketu, who lives (I think) in Brooklyn and is the author of that fine book about Mumbai/Bombay, Maximum City. Born in 1934, Ved is nine years older than Gita Mehta, herself a writer of works of fiction and non-fiction, and also a long-term resident of Manhattan.
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He worked for many years at the New Yorker, writing a series of widely read books on politics and literature. Ved Mehta moved to Manhattan even before Zubin or Sonny did. And, as it happens, even some Mehtas who are writers.
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There are probably Mehtas who are traders on Wall Street, Mehtas who are software engineers, Mehtas who are grocers. There must be hundreds of Mehtas listed in the telephone directories of New York’s Five Boroughs. He is one of the two or three most respected figures in American publishing, having for several decades run the prestigious imprint of Alfred A. The Punjabi Mehta’s first name is Ajai, though he is more familiarly known as Sonny.
A native of Mumbai, and still an Indian citizen, he has made an immense reputation in the world of music, conducting orchestras in Tel Aviv, Berlin and Vienna apart from New York. Then he continued: both are called Mehta, although one is a Punjabi, the other a Parsi. When I was last in that city, I received an email from Rukun Advani, a publisher who lives in Ranikhet and is passionate about Western classical music.Īdvani said that he largely identified New York with two men who lived there: an editor he greatly admired, and a conductor he hugely respected. It seems to me that a wonderful book is waiting to be written about the Indians who have enriched the literary and artistic life of New York. Other books explain how London was made less insular by talented individuals fleeing Hitler and Stalin - such as the writers Arthur Koestler, Sebastian Haffner, and George Mikes the historians EH Gombrich and Eric Hobsbawm the publishers Andre Deutsch and George Weidenfeld. Books have been written on how American writers (from Ernest Hemingway and Richard Wright on to James Baldwin and Edmund White) did some of their best work in Paris. There is a rich literature on how the culture of modern cities has been nourished by immigrants from other countries.
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