Gita Mehta at the Wikipedia
Gita Mehta, The Teacher’s Story, by Elisa
Sola
Gita
Mehta, biography
Gita
Mehta is an Indian writer and documentary filmmaker. She was born in Delhi in
1943 into a well-known Odia family. She’s alive, and she’s 79 years old.
Odia
people are native to the Indian state of Odisha, which is located in Eastern of
India, and they have their own language, Odia, which is one of the classical
languages of India. India is an independent republic since 1950, and Odisha,
formerly Orissa, became independent into the republic of India on April 1936.
Gita’s
father, Biju Patnaik, was an Indian independence activist and a Chief Minister
in post-independence Odisha, and her brother, Naveen Patnaik, is the Chief
Minister of Odisha since 2000. In 2019 Gita Mehta was nominated for one of the
highest civilian awards in the field of literature and education, the Padma
Shri, but she declined, because the general elections were coming and she
didn’t want to harm her brother.
She
was educated in India and in the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. In
her professional career, she has produced and/or directed 14 television
documentaries for UK, European and US networks. During the years 1970–1971 she
was a television war correspondent for the US television network NBC.
She
is the widow of Sonny Mehta, former head of the Alfred A. Knopf publishing
house, whom she married in 1965. She has one son, Aditya Singh Mehta. Her books
have been translated into 21 languages and been on the bestseller lists in
Europe, the US and India. Her fiction and non-fiction writings focus
exclusively on India - its culture and history - and on the Western perception
of it. Her works reflect the insight gained through her journalistic and
political background.
She
has published 5 works: Karma Cola in 1979, a non-fiction book about India and
its mysticism; Raj, her first novel, in 1989, which is and colourful historical
story that follows the progression of a young woman born into Indian nobility
under the British Raj. In this novel, she mixes history and fiction. The next
work is A River Sutra, published in 1993, a collection of short stories,
including our story, “The Teacher’s Story”. Her latest work was Snakes and
Ladders: Glimpses of Modern India, in 2006, which is a collection of essays
about India since Independence.
Mehta
divides her time between New York City, London and New Delhi.
The
Teacher’s Story
Gita
Mehta is an Indian writer that she has written about Indian culture and
society. In this short story, the author shows us how the life in India is. We
know the paanwallah, the paan leaves, betel leaves, the samosa, the paisa, the
Quawwali singers of Nizamuddin, the tanpura, the raga, the street hawkers, the
goats and shepherds in the marble mausoleum of the Victoria Memorial…
The
Teacher’s Story is one of the six stories that make up the novel A River Sutra.
These stories are: “The Monk’s Story", “The Teacher’s Story”, “The
Executive’s Story”, “The Courtesan’s Story”, “The Musician’s Story” and “The
Minstrel’s Story”. Every main character
of the novel represents a particular community.
These
six stories are presented by a nameless narrator who is in dialogue with his
close friend Tariq Mia. In this novel, Gita Mehta uses not only one narrator,
but sub-narrators. For instance, in the Monk’s Story the narrator is the
nameless narrator, but in The Teacher’s Story the narrator is Tariq Mia, an old
Muslim Mullah who is the best friend of that narrator. Therefore, the story is
told from third person point of view and makes the narration omniscient. The
technique of the novel is similar to the epic Mahabharata because these
narrators aren’t involved in the novel as a character. However, they know
omnisciently everything that happens, because they have been told or witnessed.
The
kind of narration, very simple on the surface level, with flat characters,
seeks to give moral lessons to the people, and it roots with the ancient Indian
tradition of story-telling. In ancient times' story telling was a skill, and
Gita Mehta wants to tell a traditional story with its moral message.
The
main character of The Teacher’s Story is Master Mohan, a very sensitive person
who sees broken his dream to become a famous singer when he was child because
of his tuberculosis. Due to that, he became a teacher’s music like his father,
who couldn’t see his dream come true. However, Master Mohan, despite not having
fulfilled his dream and being blamed for it by his wife and children, is not a
bitter man and continues to look for a way to live with his goal. On this path,
he meets Imrat, a blind and poor boy with a great ability to sing: good voice
and good hearing, and they both immediately make a bond.
Master
Mohan teaches little Imrat to turn him into what he couldn’t be: a splendid
singer, and they both form a family, the sweet family that they don’t have,
because they both are orphans in some way (Master Mohan is rejected by his
family and the boy is abandoned by his sister because she can’t raise him).
In
the end, the boy achieves fame in the form of a record contract, but his voice
is so pure that he is murdered out of envy, in an act of much cruelty that has
a moral explanation: “such voice is not human. What will happen to music if
this is the standard by which God judges us?”
If
I had to compare this little story with a piece of music, I would do it with de
Ravel Bolero, because it rises in tone to the final ecstasy: the pure voice of
Imrat who can’t survive in this world of evil and is silenced with a sword.
QUESTIONS
Talk about the characters
-Master Mohan
-His wife
-His father
-His children
-Mohammed-sahib
-The paanwallah
-Imrat
-Imrat’s sister
What are the Quawwali singers of Nizamuddin?
Why did Mohan keep Imrat?
Can you tell us about the attacks from Mohan’s wife and children against
Imrat?
What do you know about the taboo against eating pork? What other taboos
you know that are strange for us?
What do you think about children’s cruelty? Is it something biological,
or something that they learn from society, family, school?
Try to make a description of the Victoria Memorial Park in Calcutta.
What’s the Ochterlony’s Needle?
Who was Amir Rumi?
What kind of song did the boy sing? I mean, what was the topic of the
songs?
Tell us adjectives for Imrat voice.
What is Tansen’s tamarind tree?
When did the miracle of an offer for a recording contract happen?
Don’t you think there is a contradiction singing for God and at the same
time singing for a recording contract?
In your opinion, what happened to Imrat at the end? How do you know?
VOCABULARY
paanwallah, paan, betel, sahib, yoked, taunts, paisa, muffling,
drilling, relishing, struts, tablas, sheikh, prodded, welling, pimp, puffed up,
clumsiness, greed, drone, tanpura, raga, hawkers, samosa, pandering
