Homi Dastoor’s book is for lovers of Western classical music

Dastoor watched the movie five times at Palace Cinema in Byculla. “They’d play it every Sunday because word spread among the Christian community that Heifetz was the best violinist in the world. The hall would be full for every show,” says the noctogenarian.

The movie began a hunger for information that consumed both his pocket money (he was fined money by Sydenham College for skipping classes) and his mind. He spent two years obsessing over the genre, spending copious amounts of time at the American Library and JN Petit Institute Library, reading anything he could find on classical music. As a college student who couldn’t afford to buy any of the books, Dastoor decided to take notes. These notebooks formed the basis of Musical Journeys.

It was upon the insistence of his son and daughter that Dastoor collated the information he had accumulated over the last 70 years into a book.He spent the last two years painstakingly writing the 192-page book, which has been published by his daughter Meher Marfatia’s publishing house 49/50 Publishing. “It has been a one-man effort,” he says, adding that he could have written about more composers but he just got tired.

However, he is already thinking about his second book. “Mr Mehta has asked me to write a book about classical music for children, but that is going to be tricky. I have to start work on it soon,” says Dastoor.