For much of independent India’s life, certain trades formed an essential layer of its cultural and professional infrastructure. Typewriter shops kept government offices functioning; instrument makers shaped the sound of classical music; and small, specialised workshops preserved skills and machines that rarely appeared in mainstream narratives but held entire ecosystems together. These professions operated with their own rhythms, communities, and unwritten codes and for decades, they defined how work, expression, and culture moved through the country. But as digital systems streamlined, labour and automation redrew entire professions, the traditions of skilled manual work were increasingly pushed out of view.

It is within this shifting context that 'The Disappearing Hand,' a short documentary produced by the CP Kukreja Foundation for Design Excellence and directed by R. Gaur, positions itself. The film dives into slower forms of expertise, and the people who sustained these professions that now stand at the edge of obscurity. It studies two practitioners whose lives reveal what India risks losing when handicraft is treated as anachronism.

One story centres on Mr. Rajesh Palta, among the few remaining typewriter repair experts in Delhi. His recollections map out an era when typewriters formed the spine of government offices, courts, and private businesses. He repaired machines for the Prime Minister’s Office and supplied large orders to public-sector companies. The machines carried the imprint of the person who worked on it: their typing rhythm, pressure, even their anxieties. To repair a typewriter was to intimately read its user.

The film’s second thread leads into the workshop of Ajay Sharma of Rikhi Ram Musical Manufacturing Co., a third-generation luthier whose family shaped the instruments of legends like Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Vilayat Khan. His anecdote of The Beatles visiting the store in 1966 offers a brief but revealing glimpse of India’s cultural reach at the time. More importantly, his craft demonstrates how classical instruments are built through dialogue: between wood, wire, and the musician for whom the instrument is individually tuned.

Through first-hand testimony, The Disappearing Hand documents this form of intelligence that cannot be automated. The way the craftsmen talk about their work shows how deeply these trades were tied to identity, community, and continuity. From the knowledge that comes from solving physical problems in real time — how a typewriter’s alignment changes with use, how an instrument’s tone shifts with humidity, how small repairs alter performance, to the relationships they had with their clients who entrusted them with the tools of their practice, livelihood, and art. By bringing these voices together, the documentary becomes a record of a wider transition — showing how these professions, and the humanistic values they were rooted in, have moved to the margins of contemporary India.

Follow the CP Kukreja Foundation for Design Excellence here and watch the documentary below:

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