Books and Authors # 2 - Lucknow Boy - A Memoir by Vinod Mehta

The book has two dedications. The first one is from George Orwell - ‘An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful’ and the second dedication is based on the quote by W.B Yeats - But I, being poor, have only dreams;/I have spread my dreams under your feet;/Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

In the Introduction, the author says that he always wanted to answer the question - ‘What kind of person do I wish to be?’ He was not bothered about existential questions like ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Why am I here?’ He never had a religious or political text as a guide. He decided to chart his own individual course, frame his own ‘ten commandments’. Even though he admired Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Jawaharlal Nehru, Swami Vivekananda, Bertrand Russell, he believed that ‘all of them had random shortcomings. He wants to be known as ‘a decent human being’. He quotes the dictionary meaning of the word ‘decent’ which is ‘a person or a thing which is considered to be of acceptable quality’ He quotes Hamlet to drive home his idea of a decent being - ‘This above all: to thine own self be true/And it must follow, as the night of the day/Thou canst not then be false to any man.' He admits that he had to fight against self-pity and envy in his attempts to be a decent being. 

Vinod Mehta passed away in the year 2015. He worked as an editor for more than 40 years. He says that the only weapon an editor possesses is his publication. He concludes the introductory remarks with these words - ‘My terms as I have explained, are neither sainted nor irreproachable, but they allow me to sleep peacefully at night’.