Erisa Neogy and the Workshop of Music
Personal Essay: Erisa Neogy is a backwoods Renaissance luthier, beatnik and general enigma. For the working musician, his workshop in Auroville is something out of a fairy-tale.
Most of us have been there. The one last straw that made us question it all: Have we really come so far? Is it all worth it? Is newer better? Is the miracle of modern science and technology really that much of a miracle? Or is this mantra of onward and upward just a desperate passing glance at our own withering arrogance? Outside of Indian metropolitan centres, these straws can sometimes come thick and fast, and it was one such flurry that prompted your reporter to put these thoughts down on paper.
Sentimentality is hard to justify as a positive trait, but arguably harder is throwing away something that can be easily repaired. With a pair of my favourite plastic round-frame Lennon-style sunglasses in hand, I marched off, accompanied by my aunt, to Murugan Opticals at Muthialpet. A tiny hole-in-the-wall establishment that was once even smaller before shifting locales, it is nevertheless the oldest optical shop in Pondicherry, dating back to the tail-end of the French colonial era. I couldn’t think of anywhere better to try and fix these cheap little specs that had become as dear to me as any raw silk shirt or tailored jacket.
Ring, yawned the doorbell, a songbird pausing on a hot day. I entered with my sunglasses and nodded politely to a plump old red-bearded man in a white taqiyah, who sat on the side of the steps and stared straight through me. He seemed amused with my request, chuckling in Urdu with his companion who was looking over the books. “Look at these things,” was the only phrase I could pick out; I started to get impatient.
“Can you do it or not?”
Behind me, my aunt wished to peruse some new frames. The bookkeeper still did not look up.
The maestro gave me a long, half-smiling look. Then, finally: “Yes... I’ll try.”
He ushered me to the back room. Smell of glue shoved my brain into a vat of sawdust. Slightly smaller than the front, yellow peeling walls, a handful of boxes lay around and an electric coil burner on a table by the light switch. He gave me a here goes nothing expression and held my glasses over the burner. My eyes widened into lightbulbs as the frames begin to smoke. He blew on them quickly and started to work the plastic, bending and twisting, brow scrunched in focus. Pausing every six seconds or so, he placed them on a notebook to check the balance. Pure professional intuition, more like watching a torque wrench being used while chatting with your mechanic.
“Done this before?” I asked idly.
“No,” came his unconcerned reply. Twenty seconds later my favourite sunglasses were as good as new. We emerged triumphant from the back room as my aunt was paying the bookkeeper for some new frames. “How much for the repair?” I asked. He waved his hand away with another small smile, and the two went back to chatting.
Ring, yawned the doorbell. All in a day’s work.
Moments like these are what separates a place like India from much of the rest of the world. There is an unwillingness in the heart of Indian culture to accept disposability—not from Lay’s chips or Coke bottles—but from personal artifacts. This is true to the extent that these ‘artifacts’ become just that: priceless pieces of ourselves that we take in for an inspection and repair once in a while when things just aren’t running right.
Walking down Gandhi Street, I tipped my hat to my local horologist, who keeps his wooden stall halfway on the street, while his wife and niece take care of financial matters inside. I got my grandfather’s old Brazilian-Belgian watch fixed up here a few weeks back and spent most of my thirty-minute wait observing the man at work. Years of staring through a loupe has left him with a permanently bemused expression that oddly fits his image perfectly; combined with his bright blue shirts that match the peeling blue paint of his stall, he cuts a devil-may-care figure... The watchmaker who doesn’t give a damn.
There is an unwillingness in the heart of Indian culture to accept disposability. This is true to the extent that our artifacts become priceless pieces of ourselves, that we take in for an inspection and repair once in a while when things just aren’t running right.
Yet he evidently does... While I was paying for my repairs last time, a huge-shouldered man in a fine linen shirt slipped noiselessly past the queue, handed in a watch with a knowing smile—a regular customer, evidently—and left in a rush, leaving the rest of us to marvel. The big man himself heaved out of his chair outside to take a look at the new arrival, the owner of a bona-fide Breitling. Apparently, this local craftsman has attracted some well-earned trust and loyalty.
We take these things for granted at times, to an extent that we almost require the perspective of tourists to click things back into focus. A few years back, a friend from upstate New York came to visit, a tad woeful because someone on the flight had just sat on his favourite pair of eyeglass frames. Being a nonviolent man, as well as a visually challenged one in the moment, my friend hadn’t engaged the offender, but was still in a dour mood when we picked him up in Chennai. That is, until my grandfather took him to his preferred optometrist, Gandhi Opticals, and got the glasses fixed for just ₹10.
“How is it possible? How did he do it? I don’t get it!” My friend’s indignant cry echoed in force through the halls and verandah for days, until finally just shrugging and accepting his good fortune.
My own brother, a medical student in Vermont, still insists on getting his sandals made by the same local cobbler down the street from my house, the one he used to visit when he lived here and there seemed to be only one proper cobbler around. There are about twenty now, but my brother knows what he wants, and so does his cobbler. It’s a collaborative relationship.
There is some magic to true craftsmanship—to artisans and artists.
It’s for reasons like these—and a few others—that a number of musicians continue to seek out Erisa Neogy. Neogy is a backwoods Renaissance luthier, beatnik and general enigma down here in Auroville. For the hundreds of musicians who prefer to simply imitate their childhood favourites, his work doesn’t necessarily hold much interest. But for the working musician, or one who finds themselves wishing that a particular instrument existed, the man’s workshop is something out of a fairy-tale.
Son of Rajat Neogy, Bengali founder and editor of Transition Magazine in Kampala, Uganda, and maternal grandson of Swedish painter Erik Bystrom, Erisa cuts an oddly impressive figure. In a tiny, peeling blue-and-white workshop he stands over his bench, a bidi anchoring one corner of his mouth while stories, flashbacks and obscenities shoot out the other in a reckless stream balanced by the precision of his hands. No part of these instruments, aside from some electronics, is machine-made. Having apprenticed at the prestigious Santa Cruz Guitar Co. from before the age of twenty, this work is almost second nature to Neogy, as much as playing an instrument is to a good musician.
(Which he also is—although getting him to admit it can be difficult, depending on the day.)
Durability and tone are the two elements which best define his creations. While guitars made by large companies like Taylor and Gibson often deteriorate shockingly fast in the tea kettle that is much of south Indian weather, the precision craftsmanship of these custom-built creations—ironically marked, in our day and age, by its emphasis on the handmade—as well as Neogy’s insistence on using local woods, ensures that these are instruments that are meant to be played.
“I only like making these things for people who play them, otherwise there’s just no point, you know?” he says. “It’s a waste. Someone asks me to make them an exact copy of a Les Paul, all mahogany, exactly like the original. Everything exactly like the original? See, that’s when you know they’re not going to play it. So why are you here? Go get yourself a Les Paul! Probably just going to be sitting in your living room anyway.”
He looks up, salt-and-pepper hair dissolved in a cloud of bidi smoke and a guilty smile etched into his face. “I know, I know, I’m so mean sometimes. But after a while, you deserve it sometimes. Gotta treat yourself.”
He bends back over his desk and shows me a mandolin fingerboard he’s shaping out of venkai, a.k.a. Indian kino. He puts the wood up to my ear and taps on it. A high hollow tone sings out for a clear split second.
“Hear that? Venkai! Such a bloody good wood, listen to that resonance! And so much more stable than padauk, which tends to get all the attention cuz they make those xylophone bars out of it. But this is actually just as resonant, I’ve measured. Maybe people don’t like the word too much... brand name is everything, you know.” A strange statement from someone who couldn’t seem to care less about brand name, but I let it slide for a minute.
While guitars made by large companies often deteriorate shockingly fast in the tea kettle that is much of south Indian weather, the precision craftsmanship of these custom-built creations, as well as Neogy’s insistence on using local woods, ensures that these are instruments that are meant to be played.
On a hot day, one can only look around and marvel that the preferred instruments of musicians like Aalaap Raju, Bruce Lee Mani, John Anthony, Nishad Pandey and Steve Zerlin came out of this room, its rusty table fan and alternating wafts of seasoned wood, tobacco smoke and glue. These are among the top professionals in the country, and this is where they come for their tools of the trade. Walking into an air-conditioned store and being greeted cordially suddenly seems like an elaborate and highly-successful joke.
“Jesus, I wish I could hear U. Srinivas play one of these,” I remark, coming out of my stupor and running my hands over the freshly carved fingerboard. Neogy puts his tools down, straightens up and looks out of the window dreamily.
“Maaaan,” he starts with an almost pained expression of happy remembrance. “I saw him playing with Remember Shakti in 2012... After about half an hour, [John] Mclaughlin just put down his guitar and listened. He knew the best way to keep up was just to sit back and enjoy... Just nodded along and clapped on the beat and smiled. Incredible.” Bending over to light his bidi again, Neogy adds in passing, “By the way, watch where you step- there was a krait in here a few days back.”
This wakes your reporter up right quick. I return to my line of questioning.
“You said before ‘brand name is everything’,” I point out. “But you’ve never really seemed to try and make a name for yourself or your instruments... What’s up with that?”
He pauses a long three seconds to contemplate. “Man, it’s too fuckin’ hot and I’m too bloody lazy for all that. I have my wife, I have my cat...” He grins mischievously. “If someone’s serious about getting an instrument, they’ll find me.”
And, like with all the best craftsmen, of that there’s little doubt.
Erisa is an unwilling flagship: a title he shares with all great artists and artisans. In an ideal world, his creations would exist for himself, simply for the joy of creating them and hearing them played by himself, his friends, and his family. And this is what connects him to his fellow artisans, the horologists, the optometrists, the master carpenters. For Neogy and his kin, personal creations are an extension of family; maturing slowly, perhaps with a few hiccups, but always under the watchful eye of the craftsman... Before, with a grudging smile, he lets them out to go and make their own way in the world.
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Dhani Muniz is an Indo-Brazilian writer and musician. His writings focus on the subversive elements of human cultures and traditions, as well as the unifying elements of nature. Coming from a broad cultural background, and having lived in New York and Alaska as well as India, he strives to communicate a sense of rootlessness in his work—both in writing and music—as well as to effect a cross-pollination between his chosen disciplines. You can find him on Twitter: @suitetheexpatriate and Instagram: @suitetheexpatriate.
