SoBo couple that taught people how to speak, call it a day

Students of Campion, Girton, Bombay International School, St Agnes, New Activity School, Bengali School and the Cathedral and John Connon School are just some among the many who have grown up reciting lines of poetry with Meher and Nosherwan Jehangir, founders of the renowned Jehangir School of Speech and Drama

Mumbai: A local rendition of Pippin, smashing pantomimes, a staging of ‘Joseph and the Technicolour Raincoat’ and an Indianised version of Woody Allen’s 1966 play ‘Don’t Drink the Water’ – these productions are a few among several that came alive on the small stages of many schools in Mumbai over the last 50 years.

Mumbai, India - November 18, 2022: Nosh Jehangir and Meher Jehangir of Jehangir School of Speech and Drama, at Cumballa Hills, in Mumbai, India, on Friday, November 18, 2022. (Photo by Anshuman Poyrekar/ Hindustan Times) (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT PHOTO)

Students of Campion, Girton, Bombay International School, St Agnes, New Activity School, Bengali School and the Cathedral and John Connon School are just some among the many who have grown up reciting lines of poetry with Meher and Nosherwan Jehangir, founders of the renowned Jehangir School of Speech and Drama (JSSD).

However, a recent neatly scripted PDF note from the desk of Meher and Nosherwan dropped unassumingly into the inboxes of their associates, past and present, announcing their retirement and the closure of JSSD, thus opening a flood of memories for all those who have allied with the Jehangirs’ brand of theatre, performing arts and their unfiltered skill of teaching the craft. It sounded like a collective sigh of sorts. “To use a cliché, all good things must come to an end,” said the note.

JSSD was born in 1972-’73, when Meher began teaching at the Convent of Jesus & Mary, Clare Road. What was merely a ‘class’ turned into the prestigious JSSD, one of the most illustrious speech and drama schools in the city, also affiliated with Trinity Guildhall London. Helming school productions, running speech and drama classes and training kids for the competitive Trinity exams for half a century – it was a labour of love for this husband and wife duo; and it all started with their mutual passion for theatre.

They met when Meher was 14 and Nosherwan 11, as co-students in a drama class run by the legendary Hima Devi. Nosherwan was running late for a Baby Krishna tales narration being held at the Prince of Wales Museum for visiting English royalty. Meher was already there, eyebrows raised, when their eyes met across the room. They got married when she was 28 and he 25. “We grew up in the theatre,” smiled Meher, 70. “I started teaching speech and drama at 19. It was Hima Devi herself who pushed us to qualify with the Trinity exams.”

Meher and Nosherwan sit side-by-side on a camel coloured sofa in the middle of their rambling old-world style living room with its charming colonial furniture, tastefully scratched up in places by their feisty pet cat. Their heads bent together, speaking as much to each other as reliving their past with HT.

“If we could have made a living as actors on stage, we would have,” said Nosherwan, 67. That was their real joy, what they truly lived for. “But we were as poor as church mice,” he chuckled. Then, at 45, when Meher got cancer and their meagre savings were wiped out, they awoke to the “fact” that they “need to make money” too. “We were performers. But we literally put a full stop to our theatre careers and concentrated fully on our institute,” explained Meher.

Some 150 students swelled to 1,500 over the years (many of whom learned under them for nearly nine years), with centres ranging from their own home in the gorgeous heritage Darbhanga Mansion at Carmichael Road to St Columba’s School at Nana Chowk and later in Dadar, Bandra and Ghatkopar.

Krishna Gadhia, who teaches speech, drama and communication skills in Chembur since 2000, met them in 1987 as a student. “I owe everything I am today to them,” she said. “They haven’t just taught me to speak well but also how to be a good human being. I have learnt from them passion, dedication and commitment.” For Gadhia, the closure of JSSD is an end of an era.

Meher and Nosherwan’s early 15 to 20 years were a whirlwind of passionate and prolific theatre (and television) performances: acting, writing, directing and staging hundreds of shows - right from ‘Agnes of the Gods’, ‘Mary Queen of Scots’, ‘Steel Magnolias’ and Sai Paranjpe’s ‘Aados Pados’ to ‘Shadow Box’, ‘Brides Are Not For Burning’, ‘Tipu Sultan’, the fantastic Shakespeare Festival and Rohinton Mistry’s ‘Such a Long Journey’. Nosherwan had a great run with three musicals – ‘My Fair Lady’, ‘Sound of Music’ and ‘Don’t Dress for Dinner’ in the early ’90s with luminaries of the day. Their lives buzzed around theatre stalwarts like Hosi Vasunia, Gieve Patel, Sabira Merchant, Rajit Kapur and Shernaz Patel. The iconic NCPA, Max Mueller Bhavan, St Andrews and Sophia’s green rooms were their haunts, the creamy cold coffees and soft Parsi chutney sandwiches a vivid sensorial memory from the past.

But their run with the theatre ended when JSSD took wing. Seven days a week, from June to March, ten students walked in and out in 15-minute staggered intervals for their hour-long sessions between 3.30 pm to 8.00 pm. Extra classes till 10.30 pm would go on for weeks before each Trinity exam, which was twice a year. At any given time at any JSSD center, some 20-25 kids would hang around waiting their turn, watching each other perform. Site reading, prose recitation with changes in voice and dramatisation, improvisation and poetry recitation – shrill pitches, modulated tones and deep breaths echoed across the corridors. Kashmira Wadia, 58, said there wasn’t a day where she even needed to look into the Trinity preparations for her sons Phiroze Parasnis, now 24, and Yohan Parasnis, now 19. “Meher and Nosh have even taught them how to correctly hold a book while they read from it.”

Actor and writer Tanay Chheda, 26, an alum of JSSD, was 12 when he pretty much went from the Oscar stage in Los Angeles collecting an award with the team of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ (where he played the young Jamal) to Darbhanga Mansion to prep for his Trinity exam which was the next day. “When I started it as an extra-curricular activity, little did I know that it would shape the career path I choose in life,” shared the talented actor who had topped the Trinity grade 4 exams globally one year. Tanay made his film debut at 11 with his JSSD peer Darsheel Safary in the critically acclaimed ‘Taare Zameen Par’. The cryptic signs crafted by Meher and Nosherwan that were fixed on a plastic folder for a pause or emphasis or inflection, are still etched in his mind and come to his aid when preparing for a scene or a speech.

“I still have their notes somewhere in my wardrobe and I apply their teachings to my craft even today,” shared Dilnaz Irani, a theatre and film actor with a prolific filmography including ‘Aarya’, ‘Jodhaa Akbar’, ‘Decoupled’, ‘Heroine’, ‘Aligarh’, ‘Vagina Monologues’ and Star bestsellers among other web-series and advertisements. “I was a shy and under-confident kid who got bullied. But learning under Meher and Nosh boosted my self-confidence. I am currently doing my 55th play and I am also a qualified drama teacher.” For Dilnaz, “pulling a Meher” means just feeling her next line; it means being so thoroughly prepared that her lines are second nature. “They’re a lovely combination of technical craft and pure art and I am lucky to have learnt with both.”

For so many folk across Mumbai, Meher and Nosherwan are the indelible authors of another time, another place and another world – those days when prose pieces and choice lines of poetry were meticulously scratched out on blackboards and painstakingly copied into notebooks by rapt students. Those pre-digital days when teachers had enough time and kids weren’t rushing from one class and social event to the next. It was an era of unhurried Saturday mornings, when a one-hour 10 am class would end at 1 pm and feel like a picnic.

Mock scuffles amongst friends was not out of the ordinary. The heaps of kids on the floor would quickly dissipate when Nosherwan’s baritone boomed across the room. “Once we got to know Nosh, we realised that he used that baritone to keep us all in check, and underneath the intimidating exterior, was a very funny, fun-loving and caring teacher,” said Persis Karkaria Mistry, a south Mumbai speech and drama teacher, who was a shy, soft-spoken seven-year-old when she first joined Meher’s class at Girton School on Sleater Road every Saturday morning.

Persis’ sister Roxane Mody, 43, a speech and drama teacher at the Cathedral & John Connon School, also walked into JSSD at 12 and never looked back. “After excelling in elocution and drama under their banner, I started assisting them at their institute and did a whole bunch of theatre. Those were the stepping stones to my teaching career,” said Roxane, who has vivid memories of how she felt when she would watch Meher and Nosherwan teaching their enamored brood of younglings. Meher exuded the benevolent persona of jolly old St Nick (well, Mrs Nick). There’d be laughter, noise, excitement; and children cheering with love and admiration. When Nosherwan walked into a room, it was like being in the presence of a lion. The room would go silent, children would make way (or run away) and the average heart rate was at 100 bpm.

For the Jehangirs, the process of stepping back has been a gradual one. “We’re not that sad,” smiled Nosherwan. “It’s been a few years in the offing.” Ten years ago, Meher and Nosh handed over the operations of their institute to their niece Nina Jehangir who has been JSSD’s CEO since then.

The couple hoped Nina would run the show along with their son JJ (Jehangir Jehangir, 35), but his passion lay in music. Once, many summers ago when Meher and Nosherwan took a holiday, Nina and JJ ran a summer workshop designed to encourage reading through drama. “The children had a blast and didn’t miss us at all,” laughed Meher. “That’s when we realised we could take a step back.” While Nosherwan pretty much retired from JSSD back then, Meher continued to handhold her students for many years until the pandemic hit in March 2020 and the world went online. “I was lost,” sighed Meher, “and I had to learn to let go.”

“Meher and Nosh are my family and support system,” said Nina. “They have touched so many lives and made them stronger.” She has a small checklist of Jehangir-isms she lives by, taught and told to her by her aunt and uncle over the years: the best way to do something is to do it, the scary things seems terrifying until you do it, think 10 steps ahead and do it, and always eat dessert.

The Jehangirs will now focus on their charitable trust -- The SHM Mody Benevolent Trust Fund -- where they provide free medical aid, promote women empowerment, participate in rural intervention and poverty relief through bee keeping in 90 villages of Maharashtra. They are also spearheading three big projects to treat hills and valleys to harvest rainwater. So, would they act again?

“Although it’s my first true love, performing on stage taxes your emotional quotient,” said Meher. “Plus, my memory may have weakened and my eyesight is failing me. I may fumble my lines or trip on stage during the blackout,” she shrugged, looking comfortable with this new turn in life. “I wouldn’t mind sitting in a chair and doing voiceovers for films,” said Nosherwan. While he is yet to consider riding the podcast wave, Nosherwan has put his perfect pitch to great use and recorded several audio books at his son’s music studio. It took him back to the time of recording ‘A Suitable Boy’ for BBC Radio nearly 20 years ago, with a stellar cast of performers.

Stage and film actor Jim Sarbh, whose extensive repertoire also includes ‘Sanju’, ‘Padmavat’, ‘Neerja’, ‘Made in Heaven’, ‘Rocket Boys’ and ‘Four More Shots Please’, is another JSSD alum with the fondest memories of Meher and Nosherwan. “They were both so full of charm, natural performers, and had just the right amount of sternness and encouragement and glee to motivate me. Elocution class with Nosherwan and Meher on a Saturday afternoon was an event I always looked forward to. Through them I was exposed to hilarious poets and interesting authors,” he recalled.

Poetry and prose at JSSD was a delightful mix of Roald Dahl, AK Ramanujan and Ranjit Lal’s ‘When Banshee Kissed Bimbo and Other Stories’ along with gems from ‘Punchtantra - Parables for the 21st Century’ by Gautam Bhatia, an architect with remarkable sense of humour.

It’s been over 50 years of observing generations of kids evolve, grow and move on. But children are children, vouch Meher and Nosherwan – “that basic thing will never change,” they smiled. There is one thing that has become worse though: reading skills. JSSD 2.0 might be well warranted, but one can only hope.