Being Cyrus

The 2006 Homi Adjania movie, Being Cyrus, starring Saif Ali Khan portrayed the 'tragicomic' characters in a typical Parsee setting in Mumbai and Panchgani. Saif's character has shades of gray throughout the movie and its very reminiscent of his performance in 'Ek Haseena Thi'. Saif gets sucked into a plot hatched by his employer's wife, to remove all the obstacles, i.e, the mostly single male members in the family, to get hold of the property owned by the Sethna family in which she is married. The movie was a good attempt to capture some key dimensions of the Parsee community's peculiarities and common challenges. Some parts of the movie resonated with my own experiences from spending a lot of time over four to five years in the Parsee community, thanks to that part of my life which I spent with Cyrus.

My Cyrus was very far from the one played by Saif. Cyrus was not only my piano teacher but also a great friend who taught me more than a few things about life. Cyrus was very gentle and courteous. He would behave quite the same with people from different communities, social classes or interests. The secret to this lay in the fact that he spent the greater or I can say most of his life in teaching the technique of playing the piano to people not only across Mumbai but also the country. Cyrus Panthaky, born sometime in the 1930's, in the quite surroundings of the Dadar Parsee colony in Mumbai, he was one of the greatest interpreters of Western Classical music in our country. Born in a Parsee family, Cyrus had the advantage of being exposed to western and particularly classical music at a very early age. He found his expression in the Piano but he could have just as easily played any other instrument for he had a naturally gifted sense of music which enables one to master any instrument quite easily. Julie Andrews is so right when she sings " When you know the notes to sing, you can sing 'most anything" in the 1965 Rodgers and Hammerstein production 'The Sound of Music'. For Cyrus, music meant everything. In fact, he never separated it from anything he did. His conversations, indulgences and challenges, all of them emerged from and revolved around music. He was one of the youngest people in the country to achieve the Fellowship of Trinity College of London (FTCL) degree in music at the age of eighteen. He was very proud of this achievement and would often talk about that final and challenging examination when preparing us to appear for our grades . He was tutored by a Russian teacher, Olga Cran. I think this was a very big advantage and reason for his robust technique. Russians have amongst other musical attributes, a great passion and respect for technique. One of Cyrus's favourite Russian Gurus was Alexander Peskanov. Peskanov runs an institute which focuses on finger techniques and exercises followed by Russian greats like Rachmanninov and Prokofiev. Cyrus used to play Peskanov's video tutorials for anyone who chose to develop technique rather than just learn some popular pieces to get away as a pianist. Cyrus also made it mandatory for most of us to practice on a 'dumb' keyboard which was basically just the keyboard section of a broken down piano in which the keys were made even stiffer by attaching springs at the hammer end. This contraption and the exercises performed on it made us feel like one of those students who goes through tortorous exercises in the martial arts movies, while the strict master keeps smiling at their agony and impatience. But it did make a measurable difference in our technique for the fingers which were flexed for so long playing on those iron-stiff keys, seemed to just glide on regular piano keyboards. At least we chose to believe so after having gone through that ordeal.

Cyrus not only spent time teaching us technique but also made sure that we developed a deep appreciation for this form of music by taking us to various concerts, including Zubin Mehta's magnificent show with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Of course, he would be in the invitee box of the theatre while we would be seated somewhere in the last rows of the Jamshedji Bhabha Theatre in NCPA. Even those tickets were sought only after spending an entire evening, night and half a day outside the NCPA ticket office on the pavements that carried an awful stench of horse dung and Mumbai's peculiar smell carried all over by the ocean breeze coming from the nearby Marine Drive. But the effort was made worth all that it demanded by the fantastic performance which Zubin Mehta and his orchestra gave in the two hours that the concert lasted. By grace of being Cyrus's students, we could also get a sneak preview of the orchestra's practice sessions and dress rehearsal. He nearly always introduced us to the main artist of any show at the NCPA. He enjoyed Indian classical music as well and even took me backstage once to meet Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and his sons when they performed in Mumbai. Quite late in his life, Cyrus attempted what Yehudi Menhuin also did, to find a common axis between the intersecting planes of western and Indian classical music, though he tried it in much isolation as compared to Yehudi who reached out to the greats and even ended up making a significant change in his lifestyle.

Cyrus gave us all a big surprise once when he took us to Mumbai's oldest and trusted music shop, Furtado's near Metro theatre, to have a look at the recently introduced digital pianos from Yamaha. Cyrus, who had so vehemently opposed the influence of digital music on the tranquility and quality of acoustic music, was suddenly promoting a hundred percent digital impersonation of the piano. But the reason for this change was clear when we tried the instrument. It not only reproduced piano tones that only the Steinways and Yamahas could produce but also took away the dependence on the handful of piano tuners in the city who were needed almost every month given the havoc that the humid climate of Mumbai played on the piano strings. On Cyrus's directions, we all purchased a piano each at a handsome amount of over a hundred and fifty thousand rupees in those days. Our parents' trust in Cyrus was really affirmed that day. Even today, I enjoy playing on that piano which has accompanied me to three cities with very little effort in moving it unlike what would have happened with an acoustic one.

For all that Cyrus gave us and particularly me, as I would always like to think, we didn't do much for him other than organize his annual student concert by raising funds from the local community in Dadar Parsee Colony and Dadar Hindu Colony or taking him out for dinner to one of his few favourite restaurants, like Status at Nariman Point, on weekends. I can never forget the kind of attention and time which i received from Cyrus unlike anyone else in my life. But the troubled times that I went through over the last few years and partly my unforgivable mistake of not staying in touch regularly, took me away from Cyrus and Cyrus away from me, forever. Cyrus breathed his last on 10th August 2009 in the Parsee general hospital on Warden road, without my knowing. It was one of the rudest shocks that woke me up from my self centred stupor. I would always like to hope and imagine that in his last moments he must have been hearing and mentally rehearsing his favourite Beethoven creation, the magnanimous Fifth symphony, which we both practised and performed numerous times together as a duo.

Being Cyrus meant being so many things and not all were easy, a western classical musician in a country whose musical tradition is several centuries older, a Parsee who chose to follow a branch of christianity, an aging professional who maintained his standards till the end with no exceptions unlike many who turned to popular music or playing Hindi movie songs on the piano, a teacher who invested his time in every promising student with no expectations of any different material rewards but the hope that his tradition would be continued in posterity. Being Cyrus meant, at the age of seventy five, getting ready in a formal suit every evening and leaving for the Taj to perform for opulent, but not always dignified, listeners. It meant taking care of an equally old sister who also chose to not marry, like him. Being Cyrus would have meant a very different way of leading life for me and I did have that choice at one point. I secretly regret that choice sometimes when the mundane life of a corporate professional gets on my nerves.

If only out of my own selfish interest, I wish Homi Adjania would have met this Cyrus and painted the life of this musical genius on a medium that can reach far more people than this inconspicuous blog.