![]() As a musician, I can't stand rock 'n' roll.I believe I have finally understood how the world works (mostly) and realized that it does not. But I love to go to chamber music concerts to hear the quartets and trios. "I'm involved with music six hours a day. "What kind of music do you listen to," I asked when he got back to the interview. The telephone engaged me with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony this time. Then gave me a six months' working visa!" He put me on hold again. ![]() They made me fill a form of 24 pages and asked the most embarrassing questions. "It's a diplomatic passport," he said, "that sometimes gets me into terrible rows with consulates. Yet stubbornly, or maybe proudly, he retains an Indian passport. Though his visits home are becoming less frequent with advancing age. Zubin still talks of India as being his home. So I carry a little silver tin with these small red chillies from the south of Italy." But it's different there, an assimilated version, a little Western with our spices. They speak Gujarati, they cook Parsi food for me. "But when I talk to my Parsi friends in Gujarati, they reply in English," he grumbled. He has many friends here and was looking forward to meeting them. But still, I should find my way." I wanted to talk to him about music, discuss his concerts. I started to tell him about our dug up roads and traffic jams, but Zubin cut me off. "I remember Mumbai clearly, I could drive around anywhere, it's like I never left," he boasted. Other fine Parsi gentlemen like the industrialists Ratan Tata ("who was two classes down"), Nusli Wadia and Khushroo Suntook, and the renowned advocate Mickey Chagla. I might have been talking to one of his "old boys" from St. He talks like a Parsi from Mumbai, mixing impeccable English with Gujarati bad words and Hindi slang. ![]() ![]() A longish pause during which I listened to music. He fiddled with the phone, putting me on hold, while he switched from the cordless "to the instrument in the other room". "The Brabourne is an improvement." He was talking to me long distance from LA, late at night, doing an interview. "I once played at a weightlifting arena in Delhi," he told me wryly. I would have thought the technically spectacular Jamshed Bhabha Theatre was more appropriate. Which is a venue, after cricket, more suited for an Indipop gig by rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh than grand opera by Zubin Mehta. They were held at the old Brabourne Stadium. And by conducting three concerts with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and five acclaimed soloists, including the legendary Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. He did this by releasing a biography titled Zubin Mehta: A Musical Journey that covers six decades of his illustrious career and colorful life. In April this year, he was in Mumbai to celebrate his 80 birthday. It maps his journey from Mumbai to Vienna in the 1950s to train in classical music, his professional debut at 20, and his rise in the global orchestra circuit. "I sang before I spoke," he tells her in the documentary. I don't know if he's a practicing Zoroastrian, into good thoughts, good words and good deeds, but Zubin produces good music. His father Mehli Mehta was a violinist and the founding conductor of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. It's the central tenet of the ancient religion and Parsis and Iranis of Zoroastrian faith abide by it assiduously. In Farsi, the original language of the Zoroastrians, this means 'Humata, Hukhta, Hvarshta'. It's called Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds. ![]() The ongoing Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival has an 89-minute documentary on the celebrated Western classical music conductor in its 'Discovering India' section by renowned German filmmaker Bettina Ehrhardt. ![]()
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