A lifetime of handcrafting morchangs

For as long as he could remember, Mohanlal Lohar has been fascinated with the melody of a hammer pounding away. Listening to the rhythmic clanging, he grew up knowing that crafting them would become a lifelong passion.

Mohanlal was born in a home of lohars (blacksmiths) in Nand village of Rajasthan’s Barmer district. He started when he was eight, assisting his father, the late Bhavraram Lohar, by handing him hammers and other tools. “I never went to school and kept playing with these pieces of equipment,” he says.

The family belongs to the Gaduliya Lohar community, listed as an Other Backward Class in Rajasthan, and speak Marwari and Hindi. Mohanlal was a teenager when he came to Jaisalmer five decades ago in the early 1980s looking for more work. Since then, he has made morchangs from a variety of materials: aluminum, silver, steel and even brass.

“By merely touching a piece of loha [iron], I can tell if it will sound good or not,” says Mohanlal who has spent over 20,000 hours hammering red-hot iron to shape musical morchangs, a percussion instrument heard across Jaisalmer’s sand dunes.

“It is tough to make a morchang,” says the 65-year-old and says he can’t recall how many morchangs he’s made to date: “ ginti se bahar hain woh [there is no count to it].”

A morchang (also spelt as morsing) is roughly 10 inches long and has a metal horseshoe-shaped ring with two parallel forks. Between them is a metal tongue, known as a trigger that is fixed on one end. The musician grips it with their front teeth and breathes in and out through it. With one hand, the musician moves the morchang’s tongue, producing musical notes; the other hand helps keep the grip on the iron rim.

The instrument is at least 1,500 years old, and “while grazing livestock, shepherds would play the morchang,” says Mohanlal. The music and the instrument traveled with the shepherds, and as they traversed longer distances playing it, its fame spread too and it gained popularity across Rajasthan, especially in Jaisalmer and Jodhpur districts.

Now in his sixties, it takes Mohanlal about eight hours to make a morchang while earlier he could easily make two a day. “I only make one morchang a day because I don’t want to compromise on quality,” he says and adds, “my morchangs are world famous now.” He has also mastered the skill of fashioning miniature morchang lockets, a favourite among tourists.

Identifying the right kind of loha (iron) is critical as “not every loha can make a good morchang,” he says. It took him over a decade to perfect the skill of selecting the finest iron. He buys iron from Jaisalmer – a kilo costs around Rs. 100; a single morchang weighs no more than 150 grams, and musicians prefer lightweight ones.

Mohanlal’s family continues to use a traditional blacksmith forge known as dhaman in Marwari. “You won’t find this kind of forge in all of Jaisalmer city,” he says. “It is at least 100 years old and works perfectly.”

He uses two enclosures, made of goat’s skin to pump the air. The wood through which the air passes is made of rohida tree ( Tecomella undulata ). The air has to be pumped continuously for at least three hours as the iron is heated simultaneously. It’s an arduous task. Physically pumping the air causes severe pain in the shoulders and back; inadequate ventilation leads to breathlessness and excessive sweating.

Gigidevi, Mohanlal's wife, often helped him with the pumping but stopped due to her advancing age. “This is the only task in the entire morchang-making process that women perform. Everything else has traditionally been done by men,” says 60-year-old Gigidevi. Their sons Ranmal and Harishankar – sixth generation lohars – also make morchangs.

As the pumping commences, Mohanlal picks up the red-hot iron using a sandasi (blacksmith’s tong) and positions it onto an elevated iron surface – aaran . He swiftly places the hammer in his right hand, while carefully holding the iron piece with his left. Another lohar uses a five-kilogram hammer to pound the iron piece, and Mohanlal joins him as they both hammer away.

The rhythmic hammering done by each lohar striking after the other, “sounds like the tunes produced by a dholaki and made me fall in love with making morchangs,” says Mohanlal.

This ‘music’ goes on for around three hours and causes his hands to swell. The artisan must lift the hammer over 10,000 times in three hours, and a tiny slip can injure the fingers. “It has even broken my nails in the past. Injuries are common in this kind of work,” says Mohanlal, laughing off the pain. Besides injuries, burns to the skin are common too. “Many people have started using machines for hammering, but we do it using our bare hands even today,” points out Mohanlal’s elder son, Ranmal.

After hammering comes the most difficult part of crafting a morchang – the careful shaping of the hot iron. This process takes another two hours during which he carves the intricate designs. The instrument is then left to cool for an hour or two before filing for two hours to smoothen the surface. “Filing creates magic as it makes the morchang as smooth as a mirror,” says Ranmal.

Every month, Mohanlal’s family receives orders for at least 10 morchangs which sell for Rs. 1,200 to Rs. 1,500 a piece. During winters, when tourists flock in, that number often doubles. “Many tourists place orders through email as well,” shares Ranmal. Orders pour in from France, Germany, Japan, the USA, Australia, Italy, and several other countries. Mohanlal and his sons also travel to various cultural festivals across Rajasthan, selling as well as performing.

While Mohanlal is grateful that his sons have picked up the art, the number of artisans who can craft a morchang by hand in Jaisalmer is fast declining. “People don’t want to pay even a thousand rupees for this [good] quality morchang,” he says. Crafting morchangs requires a lot of patience and hard work, something that not many are willing to undertake. “One has to work an entire day, and then they earn only 300 to 400 rupees if they manage to find a buyer. This is not sustainable,” he says.

Many lohars complain that the smoke impairs their sight. “The forge produces a lot of smoke, which often goes into the eyes and nose, causing coughing,” says Ranmal. “We have to sit near the forge in scorching temperatures, which feels suffocating.” On hearing this Mohanlal chides his son saying, “if you pay attention to injuries, how will you learn?”

Besides morchangs, Mohanlal has taught himself to craft alghoza (a paired woodwind musical instrument also known as a double flute), shehnai , murli , sarangi , harmonium and flute. “I love playing musical instruments and so I keep learning to make these instruments.” He has kept most of them carefully locked in a metallic box. Yeh mera khajana hain [this is my treasure],” he says, smiling.