The Saturday Story | The last of the instrument makers

Walk through Bengaluru’s Balepet on any given day and you will find shops lined with harmoniums, violins, veenas, and mridangas. I have often wondered who runs these stores and what their lives look like. How often have we sat at a concert, lost in the alapanas and swara vistaras, enjoying the crisp pakka vaadya (accompaniment), without ever wondering about the hands that made the tamburi or the mridanga? And where does the craft of making musical instruments — slow, specialised, and painstaking as it is — stand in a world driven by speed and scale?

. These thoughts occupied my mind on an April afternoon as I made my way through the bustling Chickpet shopping street. My destination was Shantha Tabla Works, a hole-in-the-wall shop at Balepet’s Laldas Venkataramanaswamy Temple junction. I spot Srinivas Anantharamaiah sitting on the floor of the 17×5 ft space, making some last-minute repairs to a mridanga.

. “We make Karnatik tablas that are used for natakas, bhajans, and harikathas, along with percussion instruments such as mridangas and dholaks,” the 52-year-old tells me. Before we can talk further, a customer calls to ask if his mridanga is ready and if he should send a delivery person to pick it up.

. We have many such interruptions. A passerby asks if a nagaari (a percussion instrument used in temples) is available, and Srinivas tells him he is out of stock. “Our nagaaris are supplied to many temples across the city,” he says, adding that things are changing, with many now opting for fibre and plastic versions as well. Srinivas is interrupted again — this time it’s a call from Akber Miya and Brothers, a tabla store in Hyderabad with a history of over 120 years. The caller is asking him to deliver a dholak to an acquaintance. I gently draw Srinivas back to the story of his shop.

. For the love of tabla

. Shantha Tabla Works was started in 1964 by his father R S Anantharamaiah, who not only learnt to play the mridanga and tabla but also craft them under the guidance of Cottonpet’s master craftsman, popularly known as ‘Tabla’ Venkatappa. Anantharamaiah’s interest in the tabla began in Rajaghatta, his village near Doddaballapura. Bayalu natakas and harikathas were common there, and performers regularly used the tabla. A typical harikatha involves percussion alongside the harmonium, but Anantharamaiah gravitated towards percussion.

. The story of Shantha Tabla Works is incomplete without Anantharamaiah’s wife, Ashwathamma. She taught herself the craft of instrument-making end to end — from cleaning goat and buffalo hides to drying them, weaving strips of hide onto the top of the mucchige (the lid of the mridanga), and applying karane, a paste of boiled rice mixed with charcoal powder. The paste must be worked in until the skin attains a resonant quality, a process that takes two to three hours. She is 85 today.

. “My mother has worked on thousands of mridangas and tablas since the family moved to Bengaluru,” says Srinivas, the second-generation owner and a mridangist himself. “We would also supply many instruments to Aruna Musicals (another shop in Balepet then), since they handled large orders,” he adds.

. As Srinivas shows me how a light resin is applied to the left head of the mridanga, he says his clientele includes the who’s who of the music world, from students of late T A S Mani to Anoor Ananthakrishna Sharma. “One day, someone walked into the store and started trying out different tablas, playing the most exquisite beats. I didn’t recognise him until he introduced himself as (percussionist) Taufiq Qureshi, tabla maestro Zakir Hussain’s brother,” he recalls.

. But much has now changed. He points to the temple opposite and recalls how bhajans and harikathas were once a regular feature there, with artistes like Gururajulu Naidu and B P Rajamma performing. Today, most people would rather watch television, he says, visibly disappointed. Yet he has adapted in his own way. He has designed a modular, three-piece mridanga made from jackfruit wood, with interchangeable drum sections that can be adjusted for different tonal needs. It is a practical option for touring artistes, as they can use a single instrument across performances instead of carrying multiple tuned versions.

. ‘Foreign’ harmonium

. Once we wind down our chat, I take a walk around Shantha Tabla Works and notice several other instrument shops nearby, many carrying the suffix ‘Harmonium Works’. For example, Veena Musicals traces its origins to D K Pillappa Harmonium Works, which was started in the early 1900s. Aruna Musicals, too, started life as Calcutta Harmonium Works in 1933, named so because its raw materials were sourced from the city.

. This led me down a rabbit hole on the Internet. Between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, instrument makers in the erstwhile Bombay and Calcutta took to selling and stocking the harmonium.

. Rewind to 1851, Bombay: S B Ramchunder and his brothers were supplying, importing, and repairing musical instruments, with a particular focus on the harmonium, according to The Record News, a 1990s quarterly journal published by the Society of Indian Record Collectors. They were widely known as “native” dealers of the instrument.

. Step into Calcutta, 1887: Dwarakanath Ghose, a piano tuner, designed and marketed a small hand-operated harmonium that year. It “became very popular with local musicians due to its suitability to Indian music,” according to ‘The Gramophone Company’s First Indian Recordings (1899-1908)’, a book by Michael S Kinnear. The earliest versions of the instrument, however, faced resistance as they didn’t lend themselves to microtones and subtle nuances of Indian classical music.

. By the time harmonium shops appeared in Bengaluru’s pete area, the city’s historic commercial centre, the instrument was both catching on and being frowned upon for its “foreign” origins. The resistance was strong enough for All India Radio to ban it between 1940 and 1971.

. Manna Dey visit

. D K Pillappa was known to be a carpenter before he set up his instrument shop. Family lore has it that he was ordained to make musical instruments by a goddess who appeared in his dream. Over the decades, the shop was passed from Pillappa to his son, Paramashivaiah, who ran it until his death. His grandson, P Nagaraj, later branched out to start a new store, Veena Musicals, in 1973.

. Nagaraj, 76, is also an expert harmonium maker and restorer. His first break came when an Australian visitor paid him an advance of Rs 20 for a new harmonium, which cost Rs 150 in those times. Today, the price of a harmonium can range from Rs 6,000 to Rs 1.25 lakh, depending on the type and purpose. He also recalls the time when renowned singer and music director Manna Dey spent hours at his shop discussing music. “He was a great friend of mine,” says Nagaraj, now retired.

. Nagaraj’s sons, Karthik and Satish Kumar, now run Veena Musicals across Jayanagar and Balepet respectively. Satish says there is much greater demand for electronic keyboards and guitars at his branch, though a niche group still seeks traditional instruments, usually referred by music schools and teachers.

. The story of Aruna Musicals, on the other hand, begins with Harmonium Arunachalappa. According to his grandson, Shankar Ganesh Prasad, Arunachalappa often accompanied the renowned violinist T Chowdaiah in many concerts. The two were close friends and would hold impromptu music sessions that stretched late into the night, sometimes until dawn. Legendary actor and singer Honnappa Bhagavathar is also said to be a student of Arunachalappa.

. I meet Prasad at their Basavanagudi branch. The store is relatively quiet. He prefers one-on-one sessions, guiding customers to the right instruments based on their needs and budget, and offering insights into restoration work. Now 54, he specialises in string instruments and is particularly known for veena restoration.

. Labour crunch

. “There were enough workers during my grandfather and my uncle’s time (violinist A Veerabhadraiah), but when I entered the scene in the mid to late 1990s, I had to cope with an acute shortage of people willing to work on instruments,” Prasad says. This is a common refrain across legacy musical instrument stores I visit. Satish rues the shortage of skilled labour in Bengaluru and says they have to rely on workers from Mumbai and Kolkata. Srinivas, too, tells me that although there are makers of the tabla and mridanga, the labour shortage persists at large. Applying resin, or the charcoal-and-rice paste on a mridanga’s leather surface, is painstaking work, and the younger generation is no longer interested, he observes.

. Over the past 10-15 years, the shortage has worsened as the younger generation has turned its gaze elsewhere, says Raju, owner of Veena Works in Basavanagudi. Most workers from his father’s time have either passed on or are too old, while their children are educated and have salaried jobs. “The youngsters can easily find jobs as e-commerce delivery workers or auto drivers that pay more,” says the 55-year-old.

. On the other hand, their work stretches for hours and requires immense patience. A day’s work of about eight hours earns a labourer around Rs 1,200. Making a new veena involves hollowing out wood to form the pot-like resonator, fixing it to the long neck with wax, sanding, carving and chiselling it into shape, and adding decorative elements along the neck. Repair work can vary: if the base resonator is cracked, it can be glued, while a broken one may need replacement. The owners step in to attach the strings, fix the frets (thin metal strips) and ensure correct placement along with the workers, and tune the instrument.

. I see two workers sitting outside Raju’s shop and carving a veena into form, while he works beside a container of black wax, preparing to apply it to the wooden tracks that hold the frets. Tools are scattered around, and veenas line the walls. More veenas, a mix of Thanjavur and Mysuru varieties, hang from the roof.

. Raju has over 200 instruments pending restoration, some over 70 years old. He recently restored a Mysuru veena that he claims is nearly three centuries old. Making a new veena takes about a fortnight, while restoration takes a week. A knowledge of Karnatik music is important for stringing and tuning, and Raju himself has learnt to play the veena. He inherited the shop from his father Krishnan, who began making veenas in the early 1950s. In Raju’s case too, as with others, the family’s foray into instrument-making began with the harmonium.

. There are other challenges at play. Raju says that even in Thanjavur and Mysuru, long known for their craftsmanship, there has been a decline not only in the number of instrument makers but also in the quality of instruments. “During my father’s time, eight out of 10 wooden frames we received for stringing and wax work were of good quality. Now, only three or four are usable,” he says.

. Jayanthi Kumaresh, a Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee known for her mastery of the Saraswati veena, calls for institutional support for families engaged in veena making. “I have known Raju for 25 years and have always gone to him for veena maintenance,” she says, adding that they have 24 veenas at home, some as old as 100 years, all of which require regular maintenance and re-fretting. “Making an instrument like the veena is an art passed down through generations. No two veenas are the same. There are nuanced techniques involved, and experienced craftsmen learn them from their forefathers,” she elaborates.

. That inheritance extends even to the jackwood Prasad and Srinivas source from Thanjavur and Panruti in Tamil Nadu. In well-known Karnatik musician T M Krishna’s book ‘Sebastian & Sons’, a craftsperson explains that the red soil around Panruti retains moisture well, allowing trees to grow thick and dense. That density, in turn, determines the quality of the instrument and shapes how it finally turns out.

. Silver lining

. Yet amid changing times and practices, there is a silver lining: a growing interest in musical instruments among younger people. This, perhaps, is because youngsters spend a lot of time online, and many parents see learning an instrument as a catch-all remedy for social media and smartphone addiction. Some parents are also keen for their children to learn the tabla or mridanga, influenced in part by the popularity of music reality shows, Srinivas observes. Prasad, himself a trained veena player, recalls how a youngster once walked into the shop asking for a Rudra Veena, an instrument used in the Dhrupad tradition. He had never played the veena before, but had become fascinated after watching a recital online. Prasad first sat him down, introduced him to the instrument, and gave him a rudimentary lesson on how it is played.

. As I step out of the Basavanagudi branch of Aruna Musicals after meeting Prasad, I am struck by how although this story begins in Balepet, it is hardly confined to one neighbourhood in one city.

. The instrument makers I speak to find themselves at a crossroads. They have carried forward the legacy of their forefathers, yet remain uncertain about whether their children will step into their shoes. Those are stories for another day.

The Saturday Story | The last of the instrument makers

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