Are you being served?
- Meher Marfatia
- Mar 14
- 7 min read
With Jamshedi Navroze round the corner, we trace four generations of Parsi theatre actors playing a ragingly popular Irani character
It will be March 21st almost before you can chant “Numo khodu”. That’s “touch wood”, as the Iranis say. Spring Equinox dawns next week, with city Zoroastrians, both Irani and Parsi, preparing to celebrate the auspicious occasion of Jamshedi Navroze.
Without clocks to measure time, the legendary Sassanian King Jamshid asked astronomers and mathematicians to devise a calendar called Tacquim-e-Nowrooze-e-Sheheriyari. He decided that Navroze (“nav” is “new” in Persian, Dari, Avestan, Kurdish and Sanskrit), or the Vernal Equinox, when the sun-crossed equator renders night and day exactly equal, should be celebrated with prayer, food and entertainment.
Built to hug Bombay’s busiest street corners, which were once considered unlucky by Hindus, a small fistful of Irani restaurants survive on such prime plots. Enterprising Iranis, though, sensing twice the trade at a junction, looked towards Mount Damavand in their ancestral land, murmured “Numo khodu” in the Dari dialect and moved in with hope to brew the cup that cheers.
But 105-year-old Cafe Universal’s plum location at Ballard Estate is hardly its only boast. A theatrical thread ties it to a genius of the Parsi Gujarati and English stage. Look out from the airy southside French windows. A road sign announces: Adi Marzban Path.
It must have been a jaunty step with which Marzban would enter here. Settling to script sparkling comedies over stirred pots of mint tea and raspberry fizz. The charming spot was where the thespian who regaled legions of fans with witty Wodehousian farces, would think, write and audition stars.
Editor of the Jam-e-Jamshed, Asia’s second oldest extant newspaper (Mumbai Samachar preceded it), whose office was next door, Marzban was a most welcome customer. Besides comedy scripts, he sat scribbling notes for Avo Mari Sathe – the serial which became a household name from October 2, 1972, the day television first beamed in India.
Four avatars of Aspandyar
A beloved stock character treading the boards was Aspandyar, the Irani family retainer. Three generations of audiences adored four actors who played this awkward “hero”, whose every word and deed giddied up gaffes and gags as the plot thickened.
Undisputed kings of comedy played the quixotic Aspandyar, sometimes dubbed Afla, short for Aflatoon. Goofy yet cheeky, endearing yet impudent, quick with roguish repartee, Aspandyar appears perpetually exhausted, muttering complaints nonstop at the amount he must cook and clean daily.
Weary of being harangued by bossy ladies of the house, he indulges in occasional impudence or imprudence. Attired in striped ballooning shorts with a grubby dusting cloth on his shoulder, exasperating but endearing, ludicrous but loyal, the old faithful act goes beyond buffoonery or slapstick humour. As the dependable, loyal family confidant with a heart of gold, he is the trustworthy keeper of its secrets – lovers’ trysts, clandestine affairs and all.
Essaying the hyper-harassed Aspandyar, a quartet of actors, one from each era of Parsi theatre from the mid-20th century – Jean Bhownagary in the 1940s, to Pheroze Antia in the ’50s, to Jangoo Irani in the ’60s and ’70s, to Danesh Irani today – have regaled viewers.
When France met Iran: Jean Bhownagary
There could not be a more sophisticated person in real life playing this essentially simpleton character than Jean (Jehangir) Bhownagary. The half-French elfin actor was an accomplished painter, potter, poet, sculptor, magician and award-winning filmmaker. He was the transformative Deputy Chief Producer of Films Division in the 1950s when it was the largest documentary film organisation in Asia.
His daughter Janine Bharucha says, “Papa was a born actor, verging on a born ham, with an innate sense of timing. He and Adi Marzban were quite a team, listening to jazz as they wrote revues and read dialogue to Silla (Marzban’s wife) for approval. They created this famous Irani character, Aspandyar.”
Bhownagary had only to enter on stage for viewers to crack up. He would be forced to wait for minutes for calm to be restored before proceeding to speak his lines. Bharucha adds, “Something about Aspandyar sleeping on the stage floor and waking up by stretching his legs vertically while wiggling his toes, would get the audience roaring with laughter.”
Wah re Behram: Pheroze Antia
This one was called Behram instead. Hitting upon the idea of hilarious Behram-centred productions like Rangilo Behram, Behram e Su Kidhu and Wah re Behram, writer-director-actor Pheroze Antia cast himself eponymously. To great effect. As actor-producer Burjor Patel has said, “Apart from writerly skills, Pheroze the actor was consistently brilliant, a real riot. His mere entry in any production brought on the loudest clapping.”
Describing how Antia interpreted the Irani part, a Mumbai Samachar critic of the late 1950s, said, “The gags by Pheroze made the audience convulse with laughter. You saw a man stumbling, falling and standing up again. His look always supported his role. His manner of speech and gestures won the hearts of the audience.”
What was Antia’s star power all about? Tremendous stage presence, for a start. The adulation soared from the moment he appeared, clad in typical garb. “Slim and six feet tall, his physique itself impressed,” says his wife Motia Antia Irani, at a round table of Cafe Universal where we are warmly received by the Dehmiri family of proprietors (watch the video). “As his costume for every Behram play, Pheroze wore a prayer cap, long-sleeved shirt reaching his thighs, striped pyjamas below, no shoes or socks and just a pair of sapaat (front-closed slippers, like a half moccasin). That get-up drew the audience most compellingly.”
Behram was universally loved. These productions ran to packed houses, from large city halls like Birla, to 75 shows in three months of touring East Africa with Rangilo Behram. The widespread appeal, extending to the diaspora, too, perhaps owed to a certain dignity Antia brought to the bumbling Behram stereotype. He had sketched the part so that he sat at the table for meals with the family, was one with them and not beneath them.
Stowaway to star: Jangoo Irani
A stowaway from Karachi proved Parsi theatre’s colourful gain. Multi-talented and resourceful, Jangoo (Jehangir) Irani was a skilled stunt cyclist before he stole hearts as the beleaguered, hopelessly eccentric help, Aspandyar.
As fond of animals as he was of dramatic showmanship, Jangoo exchanged his pet squirrel Pipsy with visiting Russian circus artistes who taught him daring cycling and air-gun tricks. His craze to perform made the school principal gift him an English bicycle. Barely scraping through the middle school years, he spent more hours of target-shoot practice sitting on the cycle which was perched atop two tables, with candle flames around flickering audacious shadows.
Headed to Bombay with no money, he hushed a chattering black mynah, smuggled it under his shirt and traded the talking bird for the ship trip. In the city, while at a job in Central Bank, his acting at Annual Day skits attracted the attention of Antia and Marzban.
The third actor essaying this role of the domestic help, Jangoo brought the house down. With a scruffy, gingham-check duster slopped across the shoulder and striped shorts ballooning clumsily, he often begged a stingy employer for wages. Hearing mean excuses like “I pay on the 30th of each month and last month was February,” he stomped out, uttering a threat that was of course never carried out – “Chaal, Iran jaaych – I’m off to Iran now.”
Serving it fresh: Danesh Irani
Contemporary Parsi theatre’s outstanding actor today by a broad margin, young Danesh Irani was assigned the Irani character in a couple of his early plays. But he has preferred lending it less of a typecast tinge, be it in language or action (watch the video).
“I haven’t done an Irani role since the first show of Laughter in the House ten years ago,” he says. “In fact, I don’t think audiences today would relate to such a character anymore, because it’s more of a fictional caricature than a reality for most.”
Asked which diverse roles he has found personally gratifying, he says, “I thoroughly enjoyed playing a Gujarati character last year in the play, Bawa Vs Gujju. It gave me a change to work off an entirely different arc. This year, for our Navroze play, What the Farsi, I’m playing a character which again is unlike something I’ve done before. This you’ll have to come see for yourself at NCPA on 21st March.”
Laughter in the house
Fifteen years ago, 36 Adi Marzban Path – the Cafe Universal address – was the venue I chose to release Laughter in the House, my book chronicling 20th-century Parsi theatre. It was the happiest reunion. Incredibly, veteran actors and technicians met after forty years. Writer Bachi Karkaria inimitably described the vintage gathering as “soggy with nostalgia as a khari biscuit dunked in chai”. That launch lunch saw the restaurant resound with back slapping, “Kem saala”-ing, beer swigging and dhansak gorging.
But Bachi found herself also brooding on a tragic triple exit: of the quaint Irani cafe, of the hilarious brand of Parsi theatre and of the community’s ability to laugh at itself. The first two are close to ready for a requiem. May the third never come to pass. Heaven help, if mad Parsi humour loses its lustre in the dour times we live in.
Cheers to the cheekiest character to strut the stage. May his delightful ways always be celebrated. And long live the Parsi play – Parsi naatak jeevto reh!
© Meher Marfatia
Multimedia production & digital marketing: Danesh Mistry
Good one Meher! Enjoyed reading it.
Very nice ! Enjoyed reading it.Yet to hear d videos.