Looking for Freddie Mercury’s Indian roots

Freddie Mercury in his iconic costume – white pants with a pink stripe, a white T-shirt and shiny yellow navy jacket
| Photograph Credit score: The Hindu Archives

It’s a heat and humid October morning. However you hardly really feel the warmth strolling on the clear, extensive tree-lined roads in Mumbai’s Dadar Parsi Colony. That is an oasis of quiet and inexperienced in a bustling megapolis. The homes right here, no more than three storeys excessive, characteristic neo-classical and artwork deco architectural parts and the Faravahar (a bearded man on a winged disc) image on the entrance. They whisper tales of the previous.

One of many streets in Dadar Parsi Colony
| Photograph Credit score:
Chitra Swaminathan

The biggest Zoroastrian (Parsi) enclave on this planet, the colony was established within the mid-Eighteen Nineties after the bubonic plague. Civil engineer Mancherji Edulji Joshi satisfied the British in reserving this area, as soon as a low-lying marshland, for Parsis. His futuristic blueprint included not simply an agiary or fireplace temple (Rustom Faramna agiary), a college, a seminary (madrasa), and a marriage corridor but additionally the tree species to be planted on every road. In a rapidly-changing metropolis, the colony stays particular because it quietly strives to carry on to Zoroastrian tradition and custom. 

Queen on the Morumbi Stadium in Sao Paulo in 1981. (From left) Brian Could, Roger Taylor, John Deacon and Freddie Mercury
| Photograph Credit score:
The Hindu Archives

The Dadar Parsi Colony is particular for another reason, particularly for rock followers throughout the globe — Freddie Mercury, the frontman of the vastly widespread Seventies British band ‘Queen’. A Parsi by delivery, Freddie’s unique identify was Farrokh Bulsara, and his roots belong right here. He was born in Zanzibar, East Africa, and was despatched to India to check in a boarding faculty at Panchgani, in Maharashtra. Although the household later moved to the UK, Freddie, his mom Jer and father Bomi remained in contact with the prolonged household. 

“Each time they visited Mumbai, they most popular staying with us as an alternative of at a five-star lodge,” says Freddie’s second cousin Jehangir Bulsara, sitting subsequent to a desk with {a photograph} of Freddie positioned on it. “Have a look at that {photograph},” he says pointing to the one inside a glass cabinet. “That could be very pricey to me because it has Freddie’s signature on it. He gave it to me and it’s my prized possession. Like many world wide, I too, am a die-hard Queen fan. The mix of ballads, steel, pop, glam rock and blues grew to become the group’s signature type. Probably the most superb factor about Freddie was he continuously reinvented himself,” he says. 

The wood field which had a report participant on which Freddie performed music.
| Photograph Credit score:
Chitra Swaminathan

The rock icon, identified for his flamboyant stage presence (bear in mind his military-style sunflower yellow jacket and silver-sequined unitard), songwriting skills and highly effective vocal vary, started his music journey on the Panchgani boarding faculty. “I used to be informed that Freddie’s mother and father despatched him to St. Peter’s since he was extraordinarily mischievous. Throughout holidays, he would come to stick with us. He found his love for music when he grew to become a part of the varsity choir and later, the varsity band. None of us ever thought this shy boy would at some point develop into a global star. However the household remained easy and humble,” says Jehangir.

Sohrab Home, the place Freddie spent his holidays as a baby.
| Photograph Credit score:
Chitra Swaminathan

Because the four-member Queen stormed music charts with numbers like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘We are going to rock you’ and ‘We’re the champions’ and carried out to packed stadiums (Queen reside at Wembley Stadium had a turnout of greater than 70,000), Freddie grew to become one of the vital influential and celebrated musicians.

The Parsi Colony is likely one of the first deliberate settlements of Mumbai and it displays the collective dream of a neighborhood. Although it was thrilling to go across the colony to discover Freddie’s India join, the musician truly by no means overtly spoke about his ethnicity or mentioned his Parsi heritage. He feared racial prejudice and didn’t need to be checked out as an immigrant within the Western music trade. So Farrokh grew to become Freddie, and he took on the surname Mercury after his music ‘My Fairy King’. 

Freddie as soon as mentioned: “I at all times knew I used to be a star. And now, the remainder of the world appears to agree with me.”