He opens the door and greets me with a huge yawn…then offers me a large glass of some beetroot 'n' carrot concoction. When I politely decline, he gulps it down himself. This kind of sets the tone for our encounter: relaxed, informal, freewheeling. Much like director, Homi Adajania, himself.

His typical South Bombay upbringing - Cathedral School, St Xavier's College - notwithstanding, Adajania's life has been anything but elitist. He has been there…he has done that…done it all. "This can only happen if you keep your eyes open as you go through life. You must absorb, assimilate and be a part of the whole madness," he grins.

As part of his madness, he's been a scuba-diving instructor in the Lakshadweep islands; he's run the family gas station at Grant Road; he's freelanced as a travel and humour writer; he's assisted Mahesh Mathai in advertising; he's worked as the director of operations for an American adventure company; he's lived in the basement of a brothel in Vietnam; he's interviewed 600 physically challenged persons within a week for a Benetton catalogue; he's lived in Crete for a month on 147 dollars; he has been deported from Nepal and has even transported a fake fakir to Venice for an installation…. My head is spinning. He's a great storyteller and I tell him so.

"Oh, I'm nothing. My father could really spin a yarn," he enthuses. His father, the late Captain Aspi Adajania, was on a short service commission with the Indian army during the Pakistan war and was also the president of the Indian Amateur Boxing Association. "He'd travelled a lot. After every trip, he'd tell us some wonderful story about his adventures…as a double agent, a super spy, a brave soldier…. We'd listen enthralled as he held forth. I noticed though that every time he repeated the story to a new set of listeners, it would change a little and by the fifth or sixth telling, it was totally different from what we'd first heard!"

Obviously, the yarn telling gene has been inherited by the son.

His stint with film-maker, Mahesh Mathai, came about while playing rugby at Bombay Gymkhana. "Half the team was from advertising, so getting a job wasn't all that difficult." Assisting Mathai kindled his interest in film-making, but scuba-diving beckoned irresistibly. "My love for underwater diving started when I first plunged into a deep well at the Karanja naval base. It was pitch dark, I couldn't see a thing. Yet, along with the fear came a deep sense of warmth…a strange feeling of familiarity. I knew this was where I belonged."

The professional sea diving courses being offered abroad were very expensive. "I just couldn't afford them." An unlikely messiah appeared in the portly form of ad film-maker, Prahlad Kakkar. "When I told him that I wanted to become a diving instructor, he first showered me with the choicest abuses, then packed me off to the Lakshadweep islands for a basic course in scuba-diving." Adajania went on to do his rescue as well as advanced courses, the last in Mauritius.

As he continued freelancing as a scuba-diving instructor, he wrote articles and even embarked on a novel.

"Watching Dil Chahta Hai had rekindled my desire to make a film. So when Kersi Khambatta came to me with this short story he had written, I knew this was it."

The story touched a chord and Adajania took it on. His instinct did not let him down for the Saif Khan starrer, Being Cyrus, won critical acclaim at international festivals such as the Asian Film Festival at Lyon, the South Asian Film Festival at New York and the Indian Film Festival in Israel, before its release in India in early 2006.

"Real life has an underbelly that is stark and sombre. Ugliness and beauty, darkness and light, morbidity and fun are two sides of the same coin. Cinema has the capacity of flipping that coin and making it land on its edge, capturing flashes of both sides as it slowly spins to a stop. This is what we attempted in Being Cyrus," he explains. In its opening weekend the film netted a cool Rs two crores.

Suddenly, Adajania, that rolling stone…that windmill tilter, had arrived. "Don't laugh," he warns me, before showing me a medal. "Some Parsi Resource Group felicitated a whole bunch of us so-called Gen Next Parsis and presented us with these."

The grapevine has it that his community was highly miffed by the film and that some dowager had biffed him at a private screening…. He's pained, yet amused. "Of course, some people took umbrage at Being Cyrus. They didn't see it as a film but as an insult to the community. Why, at a 'Meet the film-maker' kind of function in Delhi, this Parsi gentleman got up and said I was repulsive, that Parsis are never like that in real life. I immediately retorted that as he himself had said, this was a film, not real life so why was he taking it so seriously!"

As per sundry reports his next film is based in Goa. "It was," he enunciates carefully. "The script is ready, but I've scrapped it. Something is missing. I know that, but cannot pinpoint what it is. So, for the moment it's been shelved."

What about the period film he was rumoured to be doing? "That's another fantastic story about a zamindar, set in pre-partition East Bengal. I'm not ready to handle that kind of vast canvas yet."

Suddenly, he thrusts his laptop at me and allows me to read a few lines....'Miracle and disaster. Two sides of the same coin....'

"This is the story that Kersi is working on right now. It's a great concept and I hope to have the first draft ready soon. I'll always make a film for myself, hoping I'm reflective of a larger audience. I don't want to make films to prove a point. All I want is that my films should have a signature...my signature...where viewers will say 'It's a Homi Adajania film'. I'm not into comedy or tragedy or any one genre. My forte is pulling out performances. That's why all the actors in Being Cyrus were uniformly appreciated."

Has the sudden fame and adulation changed the life of this maverick madcap?

He's quick to reply. "My wife, Anaita, has always maintained me...she still does," he says tongue-in-cheek. "So, what's changed?"