The Stolen Light

This sixth volume of Mehta's lively, affecting autobiography covers his experiences at Pomona College, Calif., in the 1950s, when, despite his blindness, he tried to carry on the normal life of an undergraduate: joining a fraternity, bicycling, owning and driving a car and dating some of the most attractive girls on campus. Containing extensive selections from the Indian writer's journal, this lyrical narrative describes the student's problems in finding people to read to him and sponsors to pay his expenses, the suicide of his closest friend and his father's puzzling relationship with a wealthy woman to whom he was ``court physician.'' Toward the end, at Harvard, he completes his first book, Face to Face , and starts his literary career. (Mar.)