Perched on Top

And Shiamak’s travel bills. Graffiti involved four months of shuttling between Delhi and Mumbai, and trying to train raw teenagers who, as Shiamak recalls with a smile, “insisted on dancing like Michael Jackson and had no idea of how to move their bodies in tandem with others”.

The grand-nephew of `Hunterwali’ Nadia likes working with kids (there are 75 hyper-energetic teenagers from across the city in Graffiti), which is good because Abbas’s musical is a series of vignettes from school life. But there is nothing amateurish about the people behind the scenes: apart from Abbas and Davar, there is Feroz Khan, director of Gandhi vs Mahatma, and Valentine Shipley, Silk Route’s music director.

Although Davar, like Abbas, doesn’t think too highly of the theatre scene in the country, he maintains that theatre and dance are important as a release for young minds. “Dance is all about keeping oneself fit and toned,” explains the man behind Dil To Pagal Hai’s slick numbers.

But even Davar would not have been able make Grease happen: it did when Abbas and Shipley met through a common friend. Shipley already had the tune ready when Abbas was introduced to him through a mutual friend. The opening line `It’s cool to be in school’ — came up at the first meeting itself, and the rest, as they say, could well make for history. But Abbas is quick to add: “Please, it’s not a line from Grease — that was: `It’s good to be at school”’.

The story of this “first Indo-Anglian musical” is all about the time in school after the summer vacation and before the end of term the last few months of school in Class XII, which is what makes the musical so poignant.

Davar may not be acting in Graffiti, but it’s not as if he has no thespian dreams. He insists he’s a “better singer-dancer than an actor-choreographer,” but as for acting, all he has to offer is a cryptic undertone: “It will happen when it happens.” Until that happens, he plans to go ahead with his Shiamak Davar Institute for Performing Arts. Graffiti, by the way, is also an extension of his training. “This venture is important to me as I love working with kids,” says Davar. “But I make a point never to treat children like kids. I treat them like adults who have to be made aware of their responsibilities from an early age”.

Talking of which, Davar started singing at the age of seven, when he was still a “highly emotional but mischievous brat”. He’s 36 now, so we can’t call him a brat, but we do have permission to call him good-looking. As he tells you, when he approached Polygram for his first album, Mohabbat, “everybody at the studio gushed about how good-looking I was”.

And he’s not uttering a jhoot.