Lathefan:
Thank you for posting this youtube. I really enjoyed seeing and hearing the Indian machinist demonstrating how to "pick up a thread". As you note, the machine shop in the youtube is like rolling the clock back in the USA a good many years. When we see youtubes of "time capsule"/closed old machine shops in the USA, we often see similar shops, left as they were when work ceased years ago. The climate in India is temperate, if not downright hot, so the shop in this youtube has an open front. I noted the two elephants with upraised/touching trunks cut out of steel plate as a header/ornament on the entry gate to the shop. I believe the elephants in this motif are a good-luck symbol. The Indian machinist is obviously not afraid of taking on all sorts of work, and doing it on a lathe many people in the USA might call unsafe, worn out, too light, and any number of other descriptions.
The shop in this youtube is very much like some of the machine shops I found in South America when I worked there in the late 70's-1981. People who use what they have, make things work, and keep their local industries and businesses rolling along.
I tend to believe there is a bond between people who have a skilled trade such as machinists, and that bond often transcends cultural, political and religious differences. I found that to be true when I worked overseas, and when it was apparent I knew what I was looking at, let alone could handle myself in a machine shop or engine room, I was made welcome and accepted in a way that is hard to describe. I had told my son about this, and he found it out for himself. Our son had spent a semester studying in Amman, Jordan. He is fairly proficient in Arabic, and open minded and accepting of very nearly anyone of any culture. After his semester in Jordan wrapped up, he went into Egypt to tour a bit. As he told me afterwards, he was walking the streets of Cairo way late one night (this was before the upheavals of "the Arab Spring" and similar events). As he walked around Cairo, he came to a street which was dedicated to vehicle repair. As our son told it, any sort of vehicle, from motorcycles to busses and trucks, was being worked on in the street, out under the streetlights. Jacks and jackstands supported the vehicles and mechanics ran in and out of hole-in-the-wall shops with parts and tools. As our son walked along this street, he looked into an open-front shop and saw a machinist running an older geared-head engine lathe. They made eye contact, and exchanged greetings in Arabic. Our son then said simply: "My father is an engineer". With that, the fellow got all the other men in that shop and they ushered our son in, made tea, and gave him quite a welcome. What the machinist was doing was turning new shafts for what looked like GM automotive water pumps. Our son told me that he was quite surprised by the welcome he got, and began to understand what I'd told him about the bond between peoples who have a skilled and similar trade. Watching the youtube, I felt that same sort of thing for the Indian machinist. I liked his style of teaching, and if I met the man, I am sure we'd hit it off well.
Many years ago, the late Mike Korol, an erecting engineer for Skinner Engine, went on a 'last hurrah' type of job/tour. Skinner had sold some mechanical drive turbines to a fertilizer factory somewhere in a remote area of India. Mike was ready to retire for about the third time, and agreed to go to India on the startup of the turbines for Skinner. He told me afterwards about the trip. He landed in one of the major cities, and had a reservation on a train, first class sleeper, to go to the region where the job was located. As Mike told it, the railway officials were pompous and insisted he sign endless forms acknowledging and taking responsibility for the bedding in his sleeping compartment. In those days, the train was still pulled by a steam locomotive, which Mike really enjoyed seeing. The train rolled across a major chunk of India, and eventually, Mike got to the job site. There, he found some local millwrights and machinists who were assigned to work with him. He said these guys were skin-and-bone, minimally clad, and incredible craftsmen able to work with next to nothing. Mike was an oldtime machinist and engine erector, and for him to have high praise for the men at that jobsite was something not lightly given. He wound up giving those men nearly all of his clothing (never mind that they likely had a local tailor make a couple or three sets of clothes from the material, since Mike was a bigger man physically). He also gave them damned near anything he could spare in the way of tools. Mike proceeded on a "grand tour" after that, sleeper train back from that region, then headed to Europe to visit Poland, the land his parents had emigrated from, before coming home. When he got home, he made up a large parcel of more clothes, work boots, shim stock, music wire (for alignment of machinery), and anything else he thought those men on that job site could use. Mike said those men were used to working on stationary steam engines, including some Corliss engines, and he taught them about the mechanical drive steam turbines, the Woodward governors, mechanical shaft seals, and they caught right on quickly. Mike had obviously made friends with the crew on that job in some remote end of India. Mike tended to also find that same common bond I've referred to when he went on steam engine erecting and overhaul jobs.
FWIW: our family doctor was a wonderful physician who ran her practice out of her home. Our physician was a graduate of Harvard med school (phi beta kappa undergrad, residency at some Boston area hospitals), and was incredibly thorough in her examination and treatment of us, and used her hands to do a lot of the examinations. She retired, and we had to find a new doctor. I tried another local doctor, but the degree of care and thoroughness which our previous doctor had put into her work was just not there. One day, the doctor I'd been using was unavailable, and I was assigned to be seen by a new doctor in the practice with the last name of "Goodrich". I was quite surprised when a tall, very good looking woman of obvious Indian extraction walked into the examining room. She took a lot of time to get to know me, and gave me an exam with the same methods and thoroughness our old doctor had used. I was floored, and told Dr. Goodrich that I had not had that kind of examination since our previous doctor retired. Doctor Goodrich put her finger on a few issues that the replacement for our old doctor had either glossed over, or missed. Needless to say, I switched over to Doctor Goodrich. As it turns out, Doctor Goodrich is Punjabi, raised in Canada. Our original doctor is married to a fellow named Nadir, who is also a Punjabi. Our old doctor and Doctor Goodrich are friends, and when I told our old doctor I'd switched over to Dr. Goodrich because she followed the same methods, our old doctor remarked: "We have a REAL doctor in our area again". Dr. Goodrich and the machinist in this thread have much of the same sort of thoroughness but are seemingly laid back and easy to be around, while being able to communicate and do their work quite well. I knew as soon as Dr. Goodrich examined me routinely, that I was in capable and good hands- literally. The machinist in this youtube conveys that same sort of feeling.