Tucked away in an innocuous little room in the bustling Lalbaug area, passers by can’t miss a conspicuous group of women sitting in a circle cajoling and wheedling around Indian percussions.

These women simplify the job for the workers who are in charge of the final segment of tuning the percussions thereby making them ready for sale.

It’s the job of these seven women to apply the inevitable shahi (ingredient used to ascertain the tone) and occasionally squeeze in the cylindrical wooden blocks (Ghatta) between the straps that are used to bind the upper and bottom ring, facilitating the adjustment of the tension by moving them up and down. The women try to get the peripheral tuning range depending on the percussion after which it is tuned to perfection by another group of workers on percussions like Dholak, Dolki, Tabla, Naal, Pakhawaj (a single drum instrument) and a host of other small percussion instruments.

Years of experience added with the fact that most of them are related to each other makes their job more like a family ritual.

For Lalbaug resident Pramila Jadhav, the affair with the percussions began 24 years ago. Her 25 year old daughter Deepa has followed in her footsteps and now sits besides her drying the drum skin with a black rock which they call Krishna or Shalimar, prior to applying the shahi, beating around the drum skin and carefully checking to get a buffer tone.

“I started doing this when she (Deepa) was one year old,” says Pramila fondly, adding that her sister Rekha too works with them.

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