If you order ‘Mashavadakam’ in Mani’s tea shop at Karamana in Thiruvananthapuram, you will get a discount of Re 1 from the actual price of Rs 5 for the popular snack ‘Uzhunnuvada’. Mashavadakam is the Sanskrit name for Uzhunnuvada and this is Mani’s small contribution to the development of Sanskrit language in this hamlet of Karamana.

The Vishwa Samskrita Pratishthanam and the Samskrita Bharathi have joined together to promote the ancient language in this area. Around 2000 people live here, and more than half of them can understand Sanskrit while a large number of them can communicate in the ancient language.

H.G. Mahadevan, a product of Government Engineering College, Thiruvananthapuram, who has served in various capacities as an engineer in Europe and India, took avid interest in promoting the language among the people of this area after his retirement in 2018.

Mahadevan said,“Sanskrit is a language which needs to be promoted and this area has a rich background in Sanskrit from time immemorial. So we thought why not be a little more active in promoting the language? We were going smoothly with our endeavor until Covid struck.”

There are four white sign boards in different areas of Karamana and each day a new sentence in Sanskrit is written on them so that there is freshness in the promotion of the language. Slowly but steadily, the Karamana area is turning into a major Sanskrit hub and the Devanagari language is turning into a style statement of this area.