HERITAGE: KNOCK ON WOOD

HERITAGE: KNOCK ON WOOD

Bakht Mashar is one of the small bunch of woodworkers in Shangla who make woodenware.

Each day, 46-year-old Bakht Mashar strolls to his work environment, arranged on the banks of a waterway in a far-off town called Sheshan, close to Lilownai town in Shangla locale in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Mashar is a craftsman and has been making woodenware for the past 20 years. He utilises old procedures of wood cutting to make wooden dishes, which have become increasingly famous as kitchenware items inside urban communities in Pakistan and furthermore among the diaspora. The utilisation of woodenware has always been normal in rural regions.

"A large number of us like to utilise woodenware things to make lassi and desi ghee since it presents fewer wellbeing perils than steel or china," says Hamesh Gul, a neighbourhood in Shangla, directing me to Mashar's stopgap set-up in Lilownai. "This kitchenware is significantly more sturdy and safe for our wellbeing compared with other materials. We have been involving it for the overwhelming majority of time in our homes."

Strolling down the crisscrossing, limited ways of the bumpy town of Sheshan, we saw Mashar's studio from a distance. However difficult it was to come by right away, my neighbourhood guide, Mian Mazhar Ali, directed me towards Mashar's place. It was exclusively after crossing the person on foot that I had the option to see Mashar sitting under the open sky, encompassed by waterway rocks, cutting a bowl.

Shangla's conventional wooden kitchenware is turning out to be more well known through its rising perceivability via web-based entertainment stages. In any case, only a chosen handful of woodworkers actually practise the craft of making it.

Mashar is one of only a handful of exceptional craftsmen in Shangla who make woodenware and sell their items locally, straightforwardly to different regions, and through market retail.

"I gained this ability from my dad a long time ago," Mashar comments. "Two of my cousins additionally function as woodworkers for our loved ones. Be that as it may, nobody, including my children, is checking out this profession since they don't esteem it. I figure this craftsmanship will never again exist after we bite the dust."

Mashar keeps total wooden supper sets of 22 pieces on hand and furthermore specially designed bits of various types of kitchenware, for example, bowls, spoons, supper plates, cups and saucers, bread and butter plates, and so on.

The arduous course of making woodenware stretches out for quite a long time.

He lets Eos know that he faces challenges in tracking down wood as the three unique types of trees—Aesculus indica, pecan, and Mallotus philippensis—that go into making the woodenware are uncommon and generally tracked down in safeguarded backwoods.

"Wood-cutters cut trees situated in the mountains, yet getting to them is difficult work," comments Mashar. "Heading out to high elevation areas in outrageous weather patterns, making wooden sleepers, and afterward welcoming the wood down on one's shoulders, one expects somewhere around a few days of work."

He expounds on the most common way of securing wood for kitchenware. After the wood is secured from the backwoods, it must be cut into more limited pieces, after which 10 to 15 of these pieces are taken to the stream bank consistently for cutting. When cut, the kitchenware is moved back inside for cleaning, drying, and cleaning, after which it is fit to be offered to the clients.

"The wood used to make woodenware isn't disallowed from being utilised for such purposes," says Zahid Hussain, a sub-divisional backwoods official at the Timberland Division in Shangla. "Yet, if anybody has any desire to secure it from the safeguarded woods, they would need to get a no-complaint endorsement and present a legitimate application to the Timberland Office. A safeguarded backwoods is government-possessed land in a specific spot. Deforestation is viewed as unlawful on the off chance that it is managed without authorization. Be that as it may, there is no restriction on cutting specific types of trees on confidential grounds."

To handle the wood, Mashar's dad made a wooden machine, a 30-foot-long wooden spillway, through which water falls on a wooden turbine. On one side of the turbine, they fix the pots with a little steel fitting, and afterward, they continue to cut the wood with a device (generally a blade). There is no utilisation of power or fuel in the running of this machine.

"It is difficult work, yet I love my work," Mashar tells Eos. "I sold a 22-piece dinner set for 5,000 rupees a long time ago." Presently, I have expanded its cost to 8,000 rupees because of expansion."

"I sell woodenware by going house to house in Shangla in light of the fact that it's my main source of revenue," says Mashar. "Strangely, I have seen a flood in the acquisition of woodenware over the most recent two years, since individuals in Shangla began selling things on the web. Since I don't have the foggiest idea how to utilise the web, young fellows buy supper sets from me and market them on the web, which has enormously helped with my business."

Arif Ahmad is a businessman in Smack who markets nearby items on the web. He expresses that there are tremendous numbers of clients in the significant urban communities of Pakistan and, furthermore, in unfamiliar nations, particularly in the Middle East, who are keen on purchasing conventional Pakistani items.

As indicated by Ahmad, individuals like to buy woodenware, cloaks, footwear, and different collectibles from Smack, Shangla, and different pieces of the Malakand division. Ahmad can overcome this issue in the organic market by selling neighbourhood items broadly and universally.

"Individuals from parts of Shangla, Smack, and even Dubai and Saudi Arabia reach us through web-based organisations to put in their requests," Mashar tells Eos. "My dad and I complete a solitary supper set request in a week and send it on to the clients."

Gul Rangzada used to make woodenware in the Lodhar area of Kana tehsil for more than 30 years. "My work was shown at various celebrations in Islamabad, Peshawar, and Smack," Rangzada comments. "My items were sold universally too, on the grounds that I signed an agreement with a web-based business organisation in Islamabad. I was getting an ever-increasing number of requests from the organisation consistently."

Rangzada's business was at its peak before the new floods. The surges of August 2022 cleared away his whole studio set-up, which comprised a smaller than normal power station, a cutting machine, and weighty wood-cutting hardware that he had introduced after the 2016 floods. He is attempting to remake his arrangement, yet his greatest concern is that the region is inclined to floods and could obliterate his hardware once more.

While there are four to six woodworkers in two better places in Shangla, presently just Mashar and his cousins are making woodenware in Sheshan Lilowani, as Rangzada's studio does not exist anymore.

This specialty needs the public authority's assistance in giving these skilled workers admittance to the public and global business sectors. This would assist the craftsmen with promoting their organisations, give a kind of revenue to local people, and give potential chances to sprouting business visionaries.