Gita Mehta was born in New Delhi, India in 1943 to parents who were very involved in the movement for Indian independence. In 1943, India was still a British colony. Three weeks after Mehta was born her father was jailed for supporting the nationalist cause. At the age of three, Mehta was left to be raised in a convent in Kashmir so that her mother could better aid her jailed husband. After India gained its independence, Mehta's father went into politics.

Unlike her traditionally educated mother, Mehta earned a university degree at Cambridge in England. There she met her husband, Sonny, who is currently the editor-in-chief at the publishing house Alfred A. Knopf in New York City. As a journalist, Mehta covered such events as the Bangladesh war of 1971. Mehta has written and filmed several television documentaries. Her first novel, Karma Cola, published in 1979, was an answer, in...