How a single sheet of buffalo skin, soaked in tamarind water for nine days, becomes a temple's heartbeat.
The workshop opens at four in the morning and closes when the sun is too high to keep the glue from running. Murugesan is sixty-one. He learned from his father, who learned from his. The drum he is making today will live for forty years and be played in three temples.
A thavil is not built. It is convinced. The skin has to agree to be a drum.
The buffalo skin spends nine days in tamarind water. After that comes the stretching, the lacing, the tuning that takes a full afternoon and a small audience.