Benjamin Chodroff

My sole mission for Delhi was to find a sitar for myself. By chance, I ended up in a hotel just down the road from a small music shop “Music Emporium”, owned by Shan Khan. I dropped into his shop the first night I arrived in Delhi and we hit it off immediately. He showed me some fine sitars and I began to learn what to look for when picking a sitar. I spent the next couple of days catching rickshaws all over Delhi looking at all the sitars. Of course, I poked into Rikhi Rham’s shop, the place where the Beatles’ purchased their sitars. I must have visited over 10 shops before realizing that the sitar I wanted was the one at the Music Emporium. The tone quality and craftsmanship just couldn’t be beat.

Shan invited me to hear his brother, Nasir Khan play the sarangi at his house. It was a once in a lifetime concert. The saragi is in some ways like a cello in that it has 4 bass strings which are bowed and it is a fretless instrument. However, the unique part of this Indian instrument is the use of sympathetic string which reverberate making each note sing out. It is a remarkable instrument and Nasir Khan made a performance of a lifetime. Shan recorded a video and I took photographs of the virtuoso as he played. Afterwords, Shan took me on his bike over to his shop where his Gurugi was working on assembling an instrument. Next, we headed over to his shop and we shared lunch - chole bhature, which was fantastic. I watched his shop for a bit (noodling on the violin to bollywood tunes) while he ran some errands. Later that afternoon, we headed over to meet his other brother who watched over the factory where the drums were assembled. Then, a motorcycle tour of Old Delhi where we ultimately ended up at Jama Masjid mosque. He did his prayers while I explored and snapped some shots. I spent the rest of the day noodling on the instruments in the shop until the evening.