After retiring in 2007, Upasni enrolled at Krishnaji V Mhatre's Modi Lipi Shikshan Prasarak Mandal, a 24-year-old institution devoted to reviving the script. The institute attracts a lot of lawyers. Several old land deeds and property documents are in the Modi script, and they need to decipher it to fight cases in court. Those who have no time for the six months' course seek transliterations. So learning a dead script isn't just for language lovers; it's also a lucrative proposition.
Mhatre says he has taught about 7,000 pupils to date, many of whom work as transliterators or conduct classes of their own. His own business card - printed in both Modi and Marathi - reads 'Modi Lipi Expert' and he spends much of his time transliterating records and court transcripts. He charges about Rs 200 a page and has even been summoned to court to testify that he can read Modi and his transliterations are accurate. His teaching assistants Suryakant Pednekar and Supriya Pandhakame also transliterate documents for a fee.
Like Upasni, Mhatre too learned only a smattering of it in primary school - the Maharashtra government stopped teaching it in the early 1950s - before taking it up again in 1991. After his teacher passed away in 2006, Mhatre, who has been an instructor since finishing the six-month course, took over the class.
Even as late as the early 1900s, many documents were penned in both Modi and English. In fact, Mhatre greatest grouse is that "Maharashtrians have rejected a language adopted by the British government". Legends about the origins of Modi range from it being a mix of Gujarati and Marathi brought to Maharashtra by a sect of Gujarati traders, who migrated in the thirteenth century to being invented by Prime Minister Hemadri Pandit during the Seuna Yadav Dynasty of Devagiri.
Over the course of his career, Mhatre has been approached by estranged brothers struggling to decipher their late mother's will and individuals, whose ancestors have used cows as collateral to avail of a loan. "Some documents written in Modi have detailed physical descriptions of cows, pawned by farmers, and even explain who gets to keep the calf in case the animal gives birth," says Mhatre, who has come also come across Gujarati and Hindi documents penned in the Modi script. Recently, he translated a document for a Muslim man, who had been receiving Rs 16 per year from the British government to offer prayers at a saint's shrine in Raigad fort. Thanks to his efforts, his client now receives about Rs 700 from the Indian government for the same service.
One of Mhatre's advanced students is 30-year-old Sandeep Sawant. His desire to learn Modi stemmed from having a trunk of 100-year-old documents penned in the Modi script. "My grandfather, who died in 1986, was the last person in my village in Sindhudurg to be able to read Modi," explains Sawant, who plans to work as a translator in his home town as soon as he has completed the 1000-rupee course. Others like 16-year-old Nitesh Soundalgekar are learning the script in order to read ancient manuscripts and historical documents. According to Dr Suraj Pandit, head of the department of Ancient Indian Culture at Sathaye College, the number of historical documents, penned in Modi, can't be counted in numbers but only in "tons".
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=modi script,Marathi,Bombay high court
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