It's not a well-acknowledged fact but music was Satyajit Ray's first love. Starting with Teen Kanya in 1961, he started composing music for his films. In an interview with Bert Cardullo, he recalls that although he grew up in a home surrounded by Indian classical music, he nurtured a love for Western classical music at college; he was strapped for cash and couldn't collect beyond one movement of a symphony or concerto. When he started working, he began buying musical scores. His bedside reading material, pocketbooks of German scores, was sourced from Bombay's S Rose and Company — the city's oldest music business founded in 1847.

Changing times

Housed at Fort's Rampart Row, S Rose & Co was where Ramji Premji Mistry, a Daman native and skilled woodworker learnt to make pianos from the British, eventually becoming its chief technician. In 1905, the company's business began to witness a slide, and Mistry started to make his own models. In 1951, he launched his own shop in Fort called RP Mistry & Co, which later moved to Mazgaon. Despite changing initials — RP Mistry changed to D Mistry after his son Dayashankar took over, before finally being called A Mistry & Co in 1956 as Amritlal, a third-generation Mistry took the helm — it sustains its 115-year piano making and rebuilding legacy.