Friends and family remember Vinod Mehta on his book launch

In “Last Word”, the final chapter of the book, Mehta wrote: “For me Nizamuddin East in Delhi…is home, a place where I want to continue to live and where I wish to die”. A stone’s throw away, at Lodi restaurant, his friends, family and admirers gathered to celebrate his life and work. “At Outlook, Vinod was a hands-on editor. When Arundhati Roy’s mammoth essays would arrive, he’d stay in office till late to make sure not a comma was out of place. He was strict about deadlines, he never missed one. He made us proud to be journalists,” said Nandini.

Vikram Seth then took over from her to read from the last chapter. “First the good news. There will be no sequel to the sequel,” he read out with a glass of red wine in hand. “Vinod would keep a glass of I don’t know what…something by his side during his TV appearances
and to honour him, I’m doing the same,” he said.

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Writer and activist Arundhati Roy was the last to speak. “I know he loved me since The God of Small Things came out nearly 20 years ago. Together, we annoyed so many people. I never set out to write those essays and every time I promised myself that I wouldn’t write again because I’d get into so much trouble. But I felt his anger about so many things and I’d write again,” she reminisced. “Just before he went to hospital, he rang me up and said ‘I’ve never asked you for anything but you have to release my book’. A few days later, he called again to tell me that the other person on the stage will be Arnab Goswami,” she said, to an amused audience.