In an unassuming workshop at Charkop, Kandivli, Sunil Shinde is surrounded by guitars – broken, bent, modified, or some new ones. He pulls at strings, adjusts guitar necks, fixes tonal problems, and any other issue that the instrument may have. Shinde is India’s foremost guitar luthier (a term used to describe someone who makes a lute or other string instruments), and the biggest names in the music industry seek him out to get their prized instruments fixed, modified or maintained.

“I feel this skill of mine God’s gift to me. I never really learnt or took classes to know how to repair guitars. I just learnt it by myself,” says the 40-year-old. His stint with the instrument began in 1989, when he joined Alberto Music in Malad. After picking up some chops from its owner Salvadore Dias, he started repairing and fixing guitars full-time. Working at Alberto also exposed him to several books on guitars. “I would repair a guitar on my own, and then compare what I had done to the manuals; it used to match.”