Aspandiar and Naja loved Cousin Merwan so deeply that once, as a boy, Aspandiar thought wistfully, "How wonderful it would be if Merwan were Zoroaster. Merwan is so loving like him. He sings such beautiful prayers and his nature is so kind. I wish he were Zoroaster."
Memo and Pila's brother, Merwan's maternal uncle Rustom Mama, was a big strapping fellow. He was working in theater, and he and his wife Piroja Mami had relocated to Calcutta, where there was an active Parsi theater scene. The couple was childless, and during 1916 Memo sent Merwan to stay with his aunt and uncle for a change of scenery and to improve his disposition. Unfortunately Merwan was not at ease in Calcutta and felt uncomfortable away from his friends. One day, however, a prominent theatrical associate of Rustom Mama's named Cavas P. Khatao, 59, met Merwan and felt extremely drawn to him. Khatao was an actor and the owner-director of the Alfred Theatrical Company, which had shifted its base of operations from Bombay to Calcutta some years previously. The company also regularly toured the north of India giving dramatic performances.
Mr. Khatao invited Merwan to stay at his home, but Merwan refused. Cavas offered Merwan a job with the company.
Merwan politely told Mr. Khatao, "Sir, I am not looking for a job."
"I will treat you like a son," Cavas replied. "Whatever conditions and wages you want I will meet. Don't refuse me."
Merwan answered, "Please don't press me any further about this." Nevertheless, Cavas persisted.
After staying three months in Calcutta, Merwan returned to Poona. Meanwhile, Rustom Mama had written his sister Memo about Mr. Khatao's interest in Merwan and the job he had offered that Merwan had refused. Consequently, when Merwan arrived home, he was met with a renewed onslaught of lectures from his mother about his future. Memo was convinced that her son was wasting his life. At her insistence, Merwan had no choice but to write Mr. Khatao and accept the position with his theatrical company.
Merwan soon went back to Calcutta. His first assignment was as tour manager to travel with the actors to Lahore in northern India (now Pakistan), where they would be staging a Hindi play, Ramayan. Merwan could not forget his friends in Poona, however, especially Behramji with whom he would frequently correspond. In one such letter he wrote:
Dear Behramji,
Circumstances compel me to do things which I do not like to do. I am obliged to eat all sorts of things that I have no taste for and keep myself dressed in clothes I have no desire to wear.
O God! What entanglements! What sort of bondage is this!
Strangely enough though, within a few months after Merwan mailed this letter, Cavas Khatao died in Lahore on 16 August 1916, during an operation for kidney stones, and the company was temporarily disbanded. Merwan happily returned to Poona, and this time, his mother could not reprimand him for either quitting or being fired.1
Footnotes
- 1.Rustom Mama and Piroja Mami later moved from Calcutta to Bombay, where Rustom became an actor in the Parsi Theatrical Company (and was known as Rustom D. Poonawala). He also worked as an assistant director for the Imperial Film Company.