A Luminous Life

Ancestral roots: the Chitapur Saraswat brahmins

I was born into a Brahmin family known as Chitapur Saraswats. Our people had lived, many centuries ago, on the Punjab-Kashmir border, and when the Mohammedans came and conquered Kashmir there was a mass exodus of Brahmins from that place. One branch went towards Uttar Pradesh, another towards Rajasthan and Gujarat, and a third travelled down the coast until the Maharashtrian kings gave us shelter in an area called Konkan — so we came to be known as Konkani Saraswats. We kept to our own way of worship, Hindu of course, with our Saptamatrikas; we were Smartas, worshipping Shiva and Vishnu alike.

My family was one of scholars and pandits, people who had practised many disciplines and even authored books of philosophy in the native language. Later, when the Portuguese came to Goa, we made our headquarters there, and our main temples — Mangesh and Shanta Durga — still stand. Shanta Durga is my family deity.

Brahmins are supposed to descend from the Rishis, and each family carries the Gotra, the clan-name of its Rishi ancestor. My father's Gotra was Vashishta — Vashishta being Rama's Guru — while my mother's people descended from Vishwamitra. It is a curious thing that Vishwamitra himself was born a Kshatriya, a warrior, who so admired Vashishta's greatness that he undertook great tapasya to be accepted as a Brahmin Rishi; and yet he was known for a quick temper. Strangely enough, my mother's father, and his brothers too, carried something of that same fire — quick-tempered but fine people — while my father's side were calm, tolerant, forgiving. Even after so many millennia, it seems, something of the old characteristics persists.