At home with Homi

A commercial star, a Panchgani house, a tight schedule and a dream team. Homi Adajania talks about his first film, Being Cyrus.

In Homi Adajania's maverick world, Cyrus has just found a place. Adajania, director of 87-minute-long film Being Cyrus is waiting for audiences to react to his debut feature film, scheduled to release later this month.

For the 34-year-old director whose talks are punctuated rather casually by abuses, abuses and more abuses, Being Cyrus in his own words was, "a seed waiting to germinate".

Now with trailers doing the rounds, Saif Ali Khan's vulnerable look on posters as he stares from a bath tub all bare-chested, other film directors promoting it in their own little way (Farhan Akhtar is impressed and recommending it to others, we're told), Adajania opted for a brief break and returned only recently after scuba-diving in the virgin beaches of Lakshwadeep.

"When you come to Lakshwadeep, we'll go scuba-diving," he offers, when I tell him I don't really know the 'S' of scuba-diving or, for that matter the 'L' of Lakshwadeep. For now, it is the interview on the agenda, on his first film or as the media is portraying it, "Saif's first English film." He laughs, "It's the first film for Naseeruddin (Shah) and Boman (Irani) too."

Must be, I tell him, but everyone seems to be talking about Saif, the commercial actor of Bollywood portrayed in a rather "" as the cliche goes "" "unconventional role". "Oh man. When I went to Saif with the script, he was like, '*%&#,' he said, 'this is so *%#@ing bizarre, it's like so damn...,'" he says excitedly, obviously going back in time "" almost a year ago to be precise "" when he had first approached Saif with the script.

Smart thinking from a first-time director who managed to get a bankable star for his first film. "I never thought that way, I knew that Cyrus was Saif. I got the star cast that I always had in mind," Adajania says, obviously objecting candidly to my statement, while zipping along the highway to Panchgani, where his ancestral home is.

For 32 days, it was also home to the 65 members of the cast and crew of Being Cyrus, what with large chunks of his film being shot in the sprawling house.

"We messed up the entire place," laughs Ambika Hinduja, adding, "The script is set in a quaint place and since the story revolves around a dysfunctional Parsi family, the house had to have a similar character."

Twenty-something Hinduja, daughter of Ashok Hinduja and youngest of the four Hinduja brothers, launched her production company Serendipity Films along with friend Dinesh Vijan. "Our role," she clarifies, "was to help Homi with the draft, organise the cast, crew and provide inputs for the script."

The financial assistance, she explains, came from her good friend Raman Macker, and Munnish Puri of Times Infotainment Media. With an investment of a little over Rs 2 crore, the film was shot on a tight schedule.

"He (Adajania) has an amazing sense of being able to translate his vision into a stunning visual format," comments Hinduja who says she met him through a friend and knew instantly after reading the script that "it had to be my first film". On his part, Adajania reluctantly admits that "we used to blow Diwali bombs to scare away the birds".

Not a single scene in the film has been dubbed and it was all sync (live) sound recorded on location. "That's why we scared the birds ya," he adds, joking how a certain politician would react on reading this statement.

Married to Anaita Shroff, who is a costume designer "" she designed costumes for the box office hit Dhoom "" both Adajania and Anaita met in St Xavier's College where they were majoring in English Literature.

"We were both terribly short of attendance and had to opt out of that course," he says, explaining, "I stepped into the filmmaking world then." For a person who claims that "I have at least 55 stories that I'm dying to tell people on a daily basis, watching a translation of written content into a visually stimulating exercise was as fascinating".

A self-confessed, "bizarre" traveller by choice, his escapades include "travelling on a one-way ticket to London, taking a fakir to Paris, checking out Vietnam on a humble scooter", Adajania says, he "felt settled down" as a "scuba diving instructor in Lakswadeep".

How did his mother "" his father died when he was in college "" react to his lifestyle? "Hey, trust my mum to call me up and say 'Homi, I'm taking the jeep to Ladakh or something'. She's really cool and yes, she thinks I'm a nut."

It was when he heard the story of Being Cyrus by friend Kersi Khambatta that he slowed down his pace and seriously thought of giving filmmaking a shot. "I was busy punching away a novel on my laptop, but when I heard a short story that was written by Kersi, I was convinced it was a full-fledged film," he says.

Both Khambatta and Adajania started working on the draft, met actor Irani who suggested some interesting changes to the script that they worked on for one month before approaching Saif, Naseeruddin, Dimple Kapadia and other members of the cast. Dimple had already worked on Leela, another English film by first-time director Somnath Sen, and was excited when she heard the script of Being Cyrus. "She said it was 'phadoo' (read, mind-blowing), ya, that's what she said," he laughs.

The film has already been invited to some international film festivals and has elicited, according to Adajania, a very positive response. "I'm excited to bring it to the audiences in India," he says, admitting that "it's for the multiplex audience and I don't really care much for box office reports". His second screenplay is almost ready "" a film based in Goa "" and Adajania is hoping to "attract a bigger budget this time".

For now he's content with Cyrus as his baby, friend and mission.

On the sets of Being Cyrus

The story of Being Cyrus revolves around a dysfunctional Parsi family. Dinshaw Sethna (Naseeruddin Shah) is a dope-smoking retired sculptor, who lives in isolation in Panchgani. Dinshaw opens his house to a stranger, Cyrus (Saif), an orphan, who in turn meets other members of Sethna's family including Katy (Dimple Kapadia). The story tells of how, through these characters, Cyrus discovers a small part of himself.

Dimple rehearsed for her role as Katy Sethna for a month before the shooting of Being Cyrus. Her character is that of an irritating nag who walks in a duck-footed manner.

Nearly 50 drafts of Being Cyrus were prepared before the film went on the floors.

Adajania says, "By the end, Saif knew each and every page of the screeplay by heart."

When Adajania approached Naseeruddin Shah, Shah asked him to leave the script on a pile of nine other scripts and come back after a month. A week later, he called to say he wanted to do the project.

The unit of Being Cyrus wrapped up shoots by opening crates of beer.

Jon Harris, editor of some leading Hollywood projects including Guy Ritchie's Snatch, loved the first cut of Being Cyrus. He called up and suggested that he could tighten the film and re-sequence it for better effect. This was done in two weeks flat.