Lucknow Boy A Memoir
Sharp, insightful, shocking, delightful ... in this sparkling memoir, Vinod Mehta, India’s most independent, principled and irreverent editor finally tells his own story! It’s an extraordinary story. Mehta grew up as an insouciant army brat from a Punjabi refugee family, in the syncretic culture of Lucknow of the 1950s—an experience that turned him into an unflagging ‘pseudo secularist’. Leaving home with a BA third class degree, he experimented with a string of jobs, including that of a factory hand in suburban Britain, before accepting an offer to edit Debonair, a journal best known for featuring naked women. With the eclecticism and flair that were to become his hallmark, he turned it into an intelligent, lively magazine, while managing to keep fans of its centrespreads happy. The next three decades saw Vinod Mehta becoming one of India’s most widely-read and influential editors, as he launched a number of successful new publications, from the now legendary Sunday Observer to the weekly newsmagazine, Outlook. There are riveting accounts of his encounters with personalities from the worlds of politics, business, films and the media. There are masterly pen portraits of personalities ranging from Shobhaa Dé to V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and Sonia Gandhi. There are the stories behind the scoops Mehta has brought before a fascinated public, from the alleged mole in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet, to the cricket match-fixing scandal, to the Radia Tapes. There are valuable lessons, too, in Mehta’s inside stories of his successful media launches, in his tips for aspiring journalists, and in his struggles for editorial independence through his nearly four-decade-long tryst with Indian journalism. About the Author Vinod Mehta has founded and edited numerous publications, among them India’s first Sunday paper, The Sunday Observer, The Indian Post, The Independent and The Pioneer (Delhi edition). Currently, he is editor-in- chief of the Outlook Group which brings out 10 magazines, including the weekly newsmagazine Outlook. Vinod Mehta has authored biographies of Sanjay Gandhi and Meena Kumari, and in 2001 published a collection of his articles under the title, Mr Editor, How Close Are You to the PM?
