What makes Hemen & Co, Kolkata’s iconic music store, special

“Who? George Harrison?” Mahadeb Pramanik points to the frayed bench, “Oh, he was sitting right there!” Pramanik has been a craftsman at Hemen & Co — ‘Manufacturer and Exporter: sitar, sarod, harmonium, tanpura, esraj, etc,’ says the weatherbeaten board outside — for almost 50 years, and his eyes light up as he recreates the time when ‘the quiet Beatle’ dropped by. “Uni obaak! He was amazed! But Hemenbabu ignored him, and kept working. At some point, he told George Harrison, ‘Arrey chhaya porchhe, shorey boshun’ (‘Move aside, you’re blocking the light.’).”

Hemenbabu is the late Hemendra Chandra Sen, who set up shop on leafy Rashbehari Avenue (it was called the Main Sewer Road back then) just before Independence. One of South Kolkata’s busiest roads, this beautiful avenue with its clattering trams is dotted with eateries, florists, traditional sari shops, and fancy new malls. Here, in a tiny space overrun with half-finished instruments, odd-looking tools, and framed photos of the who’s who of Hindustani music, Hemen & Co have been creating and repairing instruments for musicians around the world since 1945. From Pt. Ravi Shankar to Ali Akbar Khan, they all came to Hemen.

Apparently, one day when the teenager Hemendra’s sitar broke, he couldn’t afford to get it fixed professionally, so he did it himself. His guru, Baba Allauddin Khan, was so impressed with Hemen’s skills that he made him the de facto repairer of all his instruments, and those of his Maihar Band. Soon, ‘Hemen & Co’ was born and, over the years, it acquired a near-mythic reputation.

Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan of the Pashtuni Bangash gharana, who was a client, glares down from the peeling wall. His son and grandsons, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and Amaan and Ayaan Ali Khan, have 28 sarods customised by Hemen and his sons, Ratan and Tapan, who run the establishment today (there is a newer, second shop down the road). “The first sarod baba ever made,” says Tapan Sen, squatting on the floor as he tinkers with an unfinished sarod, “is owned by Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. It is called Ganga — all his sarods are named after rivers. Strangely enough, it broke soon after baba died [in 2010]. We had to repair it for Ustadji.”

High quality wood

Hemen’s sarods and sitars are made from either segun (teak) or toon (red cedar). With deforestation and climate change, high quality wood is getting harder to source, but Hemenbabu had the foresight to stockpile Burma teak and toon from the forests of Assam. “These are more valuable than gold,” says Tapan. “When they were cut, they would bleed thick red juice.” Much of the wood that’s left over after an instrument is made — the best of them are carved out of enormous single blocks — is given away for firewood to the chaiwallahs outside.

Other music stores

Calcutta had a vibrant sitar- and sarod-making culture for much of the 20th century. Wajid Ali Shah moved here with his retinue of Lucknowi sarodiyas in the 19th century, and by the 1930s, instrumental music was flourishing. In 1940, Kanailal & Sons, specialising in rudraveena, was established. Further along Rashbehari, Hiren Roy opened his famous sitar shop circa 1942. Makhanlal & Sons were already famous when Kishori Mohan Naskar started working for them. In 1941, he set up Naskar’s in Bhowanipore. All these are now defunct, with Hemen & Co one of a handful of traditional makers of the bespoke instruments, left in India. They made the dilruba, a variant of the esraj, used memorably in ‘Within You Without You’ on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. And the sitar-banjo (a sitar with a banjo’s head, made from the skin of goats sacrificed at the Kalighat temple, which they also use for sarod) for the Maihar band; the lyrically named chandrasarangi for the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael; and the mohan veena for its designer, Pt. Radhika Mohan Maitra. Even their closest competitors — Oriental Musikraft, established in 1987 by one of Hemenbabu’s former apprentices, Dulal Kanji — consider them the best.

“But the pandemic has affected business as concerts have stopped. The decline actually began with demonetisation,” says Tapan. “It hasn’t been the same since.”

“The instruments made by Hemenbabu have acquired great value,” says musician Pramantha Tagore. Mahadeb Pramanik remembers the awe in which musicians held his late employer. “At concerts, Ustadji used to say, ‘I am Ali Akbar because of this instrument. You should garland the man who made it’.”

The writer is assistant professor, Department of English, Techno India University, Kolkata.