Somebody who knew Mehta socially told me he was a vain and quarrelsome man. I felt this could not be true--I knew him too well from his autobiography. But soon I started seeing profiles in magazines that seemed to confirm it. One, by Maureen Dowd, in the New York Times Magazine, bruited the ridiculous rumor that Mehta was not really blind. He walked without cane or seeing-eye dog, he peppered his writings with evocative visual detail--he must be faking it, right? At a cocktail party once, according to the lore, a journalist was voicing his hypothesis about Mehta to a group of fellow guests when he happened to spot a distinguished Indian man sitting on a couch across the room, carefully picking the cashews out of a bowl of nuts. He walked over and began pulling faces and wagging his finger at the fellow, who reacted with visible annoyance. Whereupon the alarmed hostess came up and said, "Why are you bothering Mr. Naipaul?"