Gita Mehta was born in 1943 in Delhi. He came off a family of freedom fighters her father Biju Patnaik was an industrialist, flying ace and the most well-known political leader as well chief Minister of Orissa. Her younger brother Naveen Patnaik is presently the Chief Minister of Orissa .She took her early education in India and completed her higher education from the Cambridge University in UK.

She started her career as journalist. During 1970s she was the television war correspondent for the US television network NBC. She also produced and directed 14 television documentaries for UK, European and US.television networks. Her famous four documentaries on the Bangladesh revolution, Dateline Bangladesh, was shown in cinema halls both in India and abroad. She has also made films on elections in the former Indian princely states.

She started writing to share her varied experiences earned from her political and journalistic background. She married famous Ajai Singh "Sonny" Mehta, head of the Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. publishing house, which helped her a lot to begin her writing career. Most of her writings are based on Indian culture , history and Western perception about it. Her books have been translated into 21 languages and been on the bestseller lists in Europe, the US and India.

In 1979 her first book Karma cola was puiblished.It is a collection of interconnected essays through she potrays her own impression on Indian spiritulaty and Karmic power.She also mixed Western perception of it humorously.In her first novel-Raj(1989) she discussed India`s colourful history and culture in backdrop of Indian colonial past. Her famous work Snakes And Ladder(1997) is a collection of essays about India since independence. She defines her India through insightful, sharp and often witty eyes.