Should he, as my father, have been telling any of this to me? Was it right for me, as his son, to be receiving his confidences on such an intimate matter?’ A work of extraordinary intensity and candour, The Red Letters is the poignant story of Ved Mehta’s discovery of his father’s love affair with a married woman in the 1930s. As he begins his quest to unravel a family mystery, Ved Mehta is forced to confront his father’s clandestine relationship with the enchanting Rasil. Ved’s father first meets Rasil, a shepherd girl from the Punjab hills, in his youth. Their affair begins fifteen years later when their paths cross again-Rasil is now a Lahore socialite, trapped in an abusive marriage to a rich businessman. Their passion is kept alive by the exchange of love letters-the Red Letters-that Mehta’s father treasures for the remainder of his life. Ved Mehta’s voyage into his father’s past is both revealing and painful, as the son finds out that his father’s affair, a brief episode in a loving marriage of sixty-one years, had a devastating effect on his mother-a close friend of Rasil’s-as well as on his own life. An exquisitely written story that unveils universal truths through its compelling reconstruction of the author’s family history, The Red Letters is the eleventh and final book in Ved Mehta’s acclaimed Continents of Exile autobiographical series.
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