As it happens, I once took some synthetic skins from a pair of Remo frame drums (sliced them out with a razor) and brought them with me to India in the hopes of having an experimental synthetic head made. For reasons I don't recall I never got the chance to take them to a maker and get the job done. 😕

@@chazdrumzalot i think they could be made and would sound pretty similar to real tabla heads if the makers paid attention to how the heads are layered. Remo at one point made a tabla tone frame drum that had some similar sounds to the tabla. I just don’t think the demand is there for a company to make them. I love this instrument but man are the heads so sensitive. Plus now all the baby powder is made with cornstarch instead of talc. It would just be so much easier if there was a good sounding synthetic head

The dagga has to be tuned to lower octave 'Sa' relative to 'Sa' of the tabla. (Note : this is what makes dagga as the bass drum and tabla as the tone drum) People don't do this or are unaware of this but books on the subject define this. Normally you don't need to tune the dagga much, just pressing on gajara a bit is sufficient to tighten slightly loosened straps. It's only when the dagga is old or having quite loose straps that you need to put dowels/small gattas to tighten the straps. One more thing, older daggas with bad Syahi can be fixed by removing Syahi carefully and using atta (wheat flour) to lower the tuning of dagga. Adding or removing atta can help in getting the right tuning. But it's not really advised to do this unnecessarily or without proper understanding as it can damage the drums.

Talc will absorb moisture and yet remain dry. Corn starch will become pasty.