Inspired by Western classical, DRM authors Zubin Mehta’s biography

Mehta was born in Mumbai and moved to Vienna at the age of 1954 to learn music conduction. He is Director for Life of Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and honorary conductor with six other world renowned orchestras. The Government of India has honoured him with Padma Vibhushan. He is a resident of the United States but retains his Indian citizenship. His 2013 concert in Srinagar Ehasas-E-Kashmir was cause of a major controversy.

Dadabhoy has authoured five books in the past which includes a Dictionary of Dates, a coffee table book on JRD Tata, a collection of detailed profiles of prominent Parsis of India and a book on banking.

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Dadabhoy’s interest in Mehta was kindled in 2008 while writing Sugar in Milk containing profiles of 12 eminent Parsis. Mehta was one of the 12 personalities. In the same year, Dadabhoy read Mehta’s memoir The Score of My Life and found it to be “short on detail” and felt that “fails to do justice to the life of the maestro”.

“Soon after I started to work on a detailed book on Zubin and gathered loads and loads of books, mounds and mounds of articles – for most of which I ended up paying a lot of money too.,” said Dadabhoy.

“I had to do a lot of research on western classical music because I knew nothing about it. I am very much into Indian classical music thanks to my father’s initiation. So I read books and studied the technicalities of the western classical music,” said Dadabhoy.

During one of Mehta’s visits to Mumbai some years ago, when Dadabhoy met him and told him about the biography he was writing, Mehta dismissed the idea citing his recently published memoirs. This put the book on the backburner and Dadabhoy busied himself in his work and writing another book Barons of Banking on personalities who shaped India’s finance sector.

However, in 2014, a friend informed Dadabhoy that Mehta would be visiting Mumbai in April 2016 for a concert at Brabourne Stadium to mark his 80th birthday. This rekindled his hope of writing a biography on him. later, Mehta gave him detailed interviews, suggested some minor factual changes and even agreed to authorise the book and release it.