This book tells the stories of four men whose lives were profoundly touched by the Parsi theatre. Their tales begin near the end of the nineteenth century. In 1898, a boy named Jayshankar began his career as a 9-year-old child actor. Recruited from Visnagar, a small town in Gujarat north of Ahmedabad, he traveled the long distance to Calcutta to join a Parsi theatrical company. In the same year, hit tunes from the Parsi theatre were echoing through the lanes of Bareli (Bareilly), in what is now northern Uttar Pradesh. There a boy named Radheshyam, almost the same age as Jayshankar, took to singing in the Ram Lila. A third young man, a poet named Betab, was then working at the Kaiser-i Hind Printing Press in Delhi. A restless theatre enthusiast of 24, he had just started writing plays for the Parsi stage. In the following year, 1899, the youngest in our quartet, Fida Husain, was born in Muradabad (Moradabad), a center for artisans not far from Bareli. Although singing was forbidden in his household, he too became infatuated with the Parsi theatre. When he reached adolescence, he ran away from home to join a traveling company.

The lives of these boys were to be irrevocably altered by the Parsi theatre of the early twentieth century. Raised in humble circumstances, they grew up poor and unlettered. They went on to earn fame and fortune in their theatrical careers.