Chapter 13 Blind Culture and Cosmologies Notes from Ved Mehta’s Continent of India Hemachandran Karah I squatted down on the narrow ledge between the streams and put a hand in each stream. The right stream felt glacial, and I could scarcely keep my hand in it. The left stream was thick and soupy, and felt almost tepid. I remember thinking that, in their way, the two streams were as different as Daddyji and Mamaji (Mehta 1984, 128). INTRODUCTION Ved Mehta (1934-) is a blind autobiographer and essayist. His autobio- graphical compendium, 11 books altogether, is known collectively by the series title Continents of Exile. Due to an idiosyncratic twist, Mehta’s Continents signify much more than a mere geographical category. For example, consider this list: India, America, Britain, psychoanalysis, The New Yorker and blind culture. These are Mehta’s autobiographical nar- rative domains and are fondly called by him as ‘Continents’. As narra- tive clusters, Continents boast a rare capacity to host autobiographical recollections, standpoints, political commentaries and raw imprints of personhood. Naturally, they command a wherewithal to upholster a fuller critique of a knowledge system such as blindness. Now, one may believe that all the upholstering takes place within the Continent of Ghai, A. (Ed.). (2018). Disability in south asia : Knowledge and experience. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointe Created from ohiostate-ebooks on 2021-03-30 11:03:47. Copyright © 2018. SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.