Let’s Revive The Takhti Tradition

Morning tea is a get together for me and my family members as we all gather in the kitchen to sip Noon Chai,Salt tea, from traditional cups, called pyaleh, with freshly prepared home made bread locally called Fulkeh heaped in the wicker basket called krunjul. Salt tea is brewed in samowar,a copper cattle ,which uses embers as its fuel while fulkas are prepared on iron plate , natively called Taev, in turn placed on traditional choula called Daan. I am intentionally using these kashmiri terms in my write up knowing that my young generation readers are not fully acquainted with them or the elders haven’t safely inherited these local names into their progeny’s vocabulary,which is of course the biggest cheat we did with our culture.
The old adage in culture is,”If you want to terminate any culture attack their language first.” Now here is a worry awaiting our pondering and timely measures. It was during one such morning tea that while my Baenther, Nephew, was completing his yesterday’s unaccomplished home work my, Bawzeh,niece came running in holding a mobile phone in her hand. Straight she came to me and showed a video that had just flashed on her phone’s display screen while she was scrolling her fingers on it.The video was of a teacher from Education Zone Vailoo of District Anantnag teaching to his students,seemingly primary class, the art of writing. “What are they doing uncle,” she asked me. “They are writing,” I explained. “I can see that as well.But what are they writing on. Not notebook, I guess” she retreated quickly. “They are writing on a Mashaq,” replied my mother who had just stolen a glance on the mobile phone. No sooner that the word Mashaq came out of my mother’s tongue and reached my ear drums, my mind’s eye went on tour to past ,across years of my childhood days and came to rest in the playground of Middle School Gadole where children had just finished morning mass prayers singing,”Lub P Ati Hai Dua Bun K Tamana Mere” and now sitting in rows waiting for teachers with ubiquitous canes and rulers to check their wardi (uniform), Guleh (a light brown color from walnut hull) and most importantly Mashqs ( Takhtiyan). Mashaq was an inseparable thing from education those days. Mashaq is a kashmiri word for takhti. It is a traditional writing implement whose history dates in the indian subcontinent from the period of indus valley civilization which is backed by the discovery of terracota figurine discovered at the site of Mohenjodaro depicting the use of takhti and indicating indus valley people knew the writing skill. Mashaq is a wooden oblong-shaped plank about the size of a regular kitchen cutting board, and with the same thickness on which children use to write with a reed pen, Narkoun Qalm, or a twig pen in the initial years of their schooling. Dried stem of reed plant or piece of dried twig are carefully cut of about 6 inch length and one side,often one having no nodes, is carefully and obliquely cut using a sharp instrument like knife,Shrapuch, to draw it into a flat and pointed nib. A split is made not far from the tip of the nib which acts as store of ink.When the pen nib is immersed in ink, the split imbibes more ink and gradually pour the ink down.Back in memories, five teachers will be checking us on different parameters . They will be intimidating children who are found guilty in teachers sight and children on their part are trying every trick in book to safeguard themselves. Some children are seeing correcting the collars of their shirts and beating the dust off their pents . Girls are secretly wetting their hand palms by their saliva and rubbing hands against each other to dimen the colour of hull juice, Guleh. But, most of the students are checking their Takhtis and making sure that they look clean ,freshly written and the words look healthy.
Teachers have begun the checking process .An ripple of fear has swept the rows and students are fear ridden. Some students are being taken out during the checking process and made to stand in Guilty row. Soon they will be bent to cock form and lashed on the back. Cane will paint wonderful prints on their ebony backs. The scene is frightful to tender hearts of class 1st students for whom the scene is new.Tears are welled up from their innocent eyes. A few guilt found students of class 8th are shying their being to the back of row and avoid eye contact with the rest of student folk. They have drowned their heads low in shame. Suddenly a wave of clapping was showered on Junaid of class 3rd for his cleanliness. Meanwhile , a few students are waiting at the school gate,seeking permission to enter the school premises.They are the late comers. Peon has asked the worthy headmaster about them and the gate is thrown open. Six students of different classes have entered with bags stuffed by books, slung over their shoulders, kicking their hips as they walk in. Without asking the cause of their late they are also asked to bend up the form of a cock. Now it was the turn of yesterday’s absentees. All those students who remained absent the previous day were asked to stand up and explain the cause of their absence. Lo, some of them are stuttering while citing cause of their absence clearly showing that they are manufacturing the things to save themselves from teachers anger and cane’s wrath. A few from this lot have bought along the unfinished strips of medicines as a testimony of their illness. By 10:45 am the checking process is completed and we are asked to move one by one to our respective classrooms . I am in class four. Teachers are busy in the office chamber discussing something important. Voices are getting louder there and we pray for a fight between them.Meanwhile, we are asked to clean our takhtis and prepare them for writing again. Preparing taqhti in itself was a tedious job. First of all written words on takhtis were to be erased by a cotton piece and dust mopped by blowing air on both sides of it to clean it perfectly .Then using another cotton cloth piece black mixture of soot and water was rubbed against its both sides followed by drying in sun.Once dried the sides were smoothened and shined by rubbing them using the bottle bottom or cup brims. This way the takhi would get ready. Suddenly My nieces jerked me and pulled me back to the kitchen environ. “What could be the advantages of writing a takhti?” questioned she. “Takhti serves multi pronged benefits. It is cheap,costs almost nothing.Even the poorest of the poor could afford it easily. It is durable, manageable and easy to handle. It could be made even at home. Only you need to be relative of a carpenter or the kid of some who would know how to run a Randah,wood plane, and smoothen a wooden plank into a sheet like structure. Writing a takhti boasts the hand eye coordination to a magical level since with every stroke of pen kids are challenged to think about how and what they are doing the things and a drift of mind means impossibility in forming words correctly, thus, making it more mentally demanding. Takhti is especially thought to be the effective tool in the hands of a teacher to treat students suffering from unreadable handwriting or messy penmanship,a defect more commonly known as dysgraphia. Writing a takhti not only helps students to improve their writing skill but also to overcome dysgraphia. It also develops a sense for Calligraphy among students” I replied. “But now the tradition of takhti is fast becoming a rare sight in our valley. The introduction of modern tools of writing have back stabbed the tradition of writing by hand ,leave aside the takhti. The word takhti is as fast disappearing from our educational vocabulary as are appearing the words like type,copy and paste. But this copy and paste tradition will never give us best calligraphers. To produce one we need to revive the TAKHTI TRADITION” I added. “Yes, we need to revive the takhti tradition,” repeated my niece as she walked out of the kitchen.
(The author is teacher by profession. The views, opinions, facts, assumptions, presumptions and conclusions expressed in this article are author’s own and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”.)
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