Veteran editor Vinod Mehta passes away; outpouring of wishes on Twitter

Veteran editor Vinod Mehta passed away today in New Delhi, the Outlook group announced on Twitter today. The group didn’t immediately disclose the cause of his death though he was said to have been ailing for some time. Mehta, the founding editor of the magazine, has been the editor of various publications and written multiple books in a journalistic career spanning decades. Mehta, who was originally from Lucknow, started his journalistic career editing the magazine Debonair and went on to write biographies on Sanjay Gandhi and actress Meena Kumari. He has been the founder-editor of multiple publications, like the Sunday Observer, Independent and the Delhi-edition of the Pioneer, apart from Outlook. [caption id=“attachment_2142119” align=“alignleft” width=“370”] Vinod Mehta. Image courtesy: HarperCollins[/caption] Mehta was editor-in-chief of Outlook India until February 2012 after which he served as an advisor to the magazine. His autobiography, Lucknow Boy, was widely acclaimed. Mehta, who was Editorial Chairman of ‘Outlook’ magazine which he had founded, had been ailing for several months and was hospitalised at AIIMS. He was suffering from severe lung infection and was on life support. He died of multiple organ failure, AIIMS spokesperson Amit Gupta said. Mehta recently published another book ‘Editor Unplugged’ but could not attend its launch in December last because of his illness. Mehta was a dog lover and had adopted a street dog whom he had named ‘Editor. The dog often figured in his columns in ‘Outlook’ magazine. Mehta was three years old when he migrated to India along with his family after partition. The family settled down in Lucknow where he did his schooling and got BA degree. Leaving home with a BA third class degree, he experimented with a string of jobs, including that of a factory hand in suburban Britain, before accepting an offer to edit Debonair in 1974, a men’s magazine. Years later, he shifted to Delhi where he launched the Delhi-edition of ‘The Pioneer’ newsapaper. He was married to Sumita Paul, a journalist who worked for the Pioneer and the ‘Sunday Times of India’. The couple do not have any children. According to his own account in his book ‘Lucknow Boy’, Mehta has a daughter from an old affair from this younger days. He said nobody, other than his wife, knew about his daughter until he wrote about it in his memoir. He said he spoke to his wife and she encouraged him to write about it. The response on Twitter to his passing away was spontaneous with many from the journalistic community and outside it, paying their respects to him: