The Piano Tuner

   I grew up spending summers with many activities. Going to farms, the beach, cooking in the afternoon, and, if ten months of schooling were not enough, we used to go to summer classes studying advanced sciences. I spent those summer classes looking across the wooden jalousies hoping that a horse-rider in black cape would carry me off somewhere interesting.

   Summers too are time for piano lessons, which, for a time, I had a love-hate love affair. Three of us sisters would go to the piano teacher's house once or twice a week. Although she did not whack our fingers with a 

wooden stick, reading notes was just too abstract. And worse, when we got home and there were off-tune keys on  the piano, the interest to play looked even more abstract. 

    Thus, the piano tuner.

    There had been many home- service people we called for favors. The mechanics, the air con-cleaners, the plumbers, etc. all of them were noble in their own ways and made life so much easier in the truest sense . But still I marveled over the interesting job of  the piano tuner. 

 

   Watch a piano tuner work and you'll amaze at the incredible hearing faculties of mankind. How can he distinguish an off-tune note from the other? Did he have any good background in music?

 

   The insides of a piano. It's a 'string' instrument too!