You may have heard of women playing the mridangam, but have seen one making it?
Over the last 45 years, 72-year-old Ashwathamma has made nearly 3,000 tablas and mridangams. She has repaired thousands more. So much so, she is referred to as ‘tabla taayi’.
Her workspace, Shanta Tabla Works on the busy OTC Road near Balepete Circle, is stacked with tabla, mridangam, dholak, dholki, damaruga, nagaari, thamte, khanjari and other percussion instruments.
“Every year, I make more than 50 instruments. Percussion stalwarts like M.L. Veerabhadraiah, A.V. Anand and T.A.S. Mani have vouched for its quality,” she says.
There was a time when everyone advised her to roll incense sticks, rather than make mridangams, which requires “manly strength”. She argues that making percussion instruments is more of skill than strength. “It takes a week to make a pair of tablas and 10 days for a mridangam.”
Ms. Ashwathamma was married at 15 to Anantharamaiah, who played tabla at the Anjaneya Swamy temple in Rajaghatta near Doddaballapur. They moved to Bengaluru in 1965 seeking jobs as makers and repairers of instruments. Ashwathamma began assisting her husband and then made it her own vocation. “My passion to learn is my accomplishment. Now I want my son to take forward the family profession,” she says.
