Mashithandu!

Mashithandu..!!

We shared it in little classes, from Class I to Class IV.  There was no KG class in those days.  No LKG, no UKG.  Play School was unheard of.  Going to school to paly!?  OH..God! Can't anybody play at home?  This was the atmosphere then!

What is Mashithandu?  It is a piece of the stem of a little plant, usually seen in Kerala.  May be, this is available in other tropical places too.

Why I am mentioning Mashithandu here is to share the nostalgia connected to it and the goodness with which a lot of people used it in olden days.  This is connected to class rooms of elementary schools of olden days!  Children used to use a wooden boardered slate to practice writing and learn the alphabets on them.  The writing tool used in this, apart from the slate is a slate-pencil.  A pencil made of the same material like the slate stone, cut into a pencil shape.  The slate itself is a flat piece of the stone.

When any thing is written on this slate either in slate pencil or chalk, it will remain there until we erased it!  For practising writing letters, mean, alphabets, to practise simple arithmetic etc., there was nothing like a slate and slate pencil.  Every time we have to write something new, the old writing is erased off.  As little children we did it with our bare hands.  We had to have something better if the slate had to be cleaner.  One way is to wash it in water.  Then, the whole slate will be wet and it will take a long time to dry up.  Here comes the entry of our nostalgic 'Mashithandu'  .

The children who wanted to have a quick cleaning of their slates were careful to collect few pieces of mashithandu, from the plants around their houses either by themselves or with the help of their parents or near relatives.   They in turn, shared a few pieces with the other children in the class who generally sat near them. The huge friendships as we see now, were not there in those days! Those children, who did not know of this magic watery cleaning material, were struck with wonder and looked at the given in amazement!!

Then, it turns out to be friendship of a kind which sometimes extends beyond the class.  Mostly it is forgotten.  We have not seen any deep friendship from such sharing, but a great goodness feeling and all were happy.  In turn, it turned us on to have them ourselves, and we started in right earnest to search our back yards for this rare species of plants.  It has a small thick stock with nodes and leaves and small branches growing from those nodes.  All together the plants grow to a height of only0 inches or so at the most.  It grows under other plants which are regularly wetted, like plantains, coconut trees near houses or such other garden areas as water is a must for it,but not too much water.  It stores the water in its stem.  That is how, the pieces of stem is becoming the useful and loved 'Mashithandu'  .  I had shared a lot of 'Mashithandu' with other children in the class and had created a lot of friendship at the time which is normally forgotten when we leave and change school if not totally leave it.  There was also the thorny cactus, which was also used aftercarefully  removing the thorns with a piece of blade or a small knife.  This has to be done very very carefully!!  Collecting them also needs a lot of care!  As these cactus grows in dry places where normally many people do not go and so it becomes the resting abode of snakes.  Some of the snakes do not like intrusion into their domain and iif that happens they may attack!

The green thorny cactus can be cut into pieces to exactly resemble a present day rubber!  This is made in several like pieces and used and shared with other friendly children if they are not too very head weighty or bad!  These used to be such children also in class.  Like the bad cactus with thorns all over and bad to all.  It is not their fault, but their up bringing.  Their parents would be bad and they would grow bad children too.  Luckily most of such children are modified by the Teachers, Sisters, Gurus and Fathers through their schooling time.  All the same, they would be a hed ache to the other children who would have to sit near them.  In any case, such children were few and far between.

Coming back to the Mashithandu, it was my daughter who gave me a book to read on a journey by train which I was about to embark upon, when she brought out this book titled 'Mashithandu' written by a Fr.Starzon.

It catapulted me to a time far far back in life when I used to carry my slate and slate pencil, many a time not knowing about the Mashithandu.  I still can erase a slate with bare hand, but the slatee or slatepencil's dust will be on my hand.  That is when an unknown friend gave me the little piece of this watery stem. There after my little hands shared a lot of these pieces with a lot of little hands and even now I would enjoy using them for the heck of old memories.  Small children love it.

Alas, those times are gone.  The present day children, at least many of them in the villages and definitely none of them in the city metros get to see or enjoy these as they are used to paper and pencil or pen from early childhood.  The other day, I found a small child using a lap top net book and she was in KG.  I doubt, if this loving little child will get to know the mashithandu and its accompanying happiness and nostalgia to be stored for a future moment of leisurely thought!!

The little chubby chubby mashithndu withered after a time when kept in our hands.  As small children we never knew the withering character of this little plant stem which had a high water content which God had created for us little children using slate boards!  When we moved to little higher classes some childrfen brought peacock feather pieces which used to shine in the sun.  All were thrilled at the sight of it.  By this time the slate boards have been replaced with books and the children who possessed the peacock feather bits hid it in their books among the pages and showed it only to their friends.  A girl who used to sit on the other side of my bench once showed me a piece of the peacock feather which she had got from her elder sister.  This was a really shining piece  which emitted rainbow colours mostly green and violet and it glistened in the sun light.  I told this once to another boy who said he can bring another piece for me and he had heard if I kept it in the pages of my book it will double after some days.  True to his word he brought the piece of the shining glistening peacock feathernd gave it to me.  I was thrilled.   I hid it among the pages of my newest book which had the best of smells and  kept on looking at it to see its doubling.  Till the end of the class year it had not doubled.  But still, I liked the glistening colour of the feather which is a special God send for little children in small classes.!

Among such small wonders, the Mashithandu was the first one!!

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