Chandra Harmonium Works

If you walk down Sadar Patrappa Road into the Raghavendra Industrial Estate, you will find Chandra Harmonium Works at 533/1. We are on Thigalarapalya Main Road, not too far from the Sun Computer Training Center. The shop is full of the smell of seasoned wood, glue, and the metallic tang of brass reeds. It is a noisy place, but not because of machines. Usually, it’s the sound of someone tuning a scale or tapping on a wooden frame to check the resonance. We have been making and fixing harmoniums here for a long time, and the floor is always covered in fine sawdust that gets into everything. Our tools are old and have been shaped by our hands over years of use. It is a craft that takes a lot of patience, sitting on a low stool and making sure the bellows are airtight and the keys don't stick. The industrial estate around us is full of fabrication shops and loud manufacturing, but inside here, we focus on the music. Sometimes a professional musician comes in and stays for hours while we adjust a single note to their liking. Other times it is just someone bringing in an old family instrument that has been sitting in a closet for twenty years. We take it apart, clean out the dust, and make it sing again. It is slow, steady work that doesn't change much with the seasons.