My Ancestral Home: Where Is It?

Preeti Padgaonkar / In Goa, and in some other parts of India, it is often suggested that every person has a village of origin. The village along with family are sometimes still critical to establish identity, and individuals are often identified and known by their family and village name, along with other social markers such as caste. In Goa it is assumed that the ancestors of certain families founded the village, and hence all their male descendants enjoy the status of ganvkars (belonging to the families that founded the village). Ganvkars collectively managed and cultivated the village lands, which belonged solely to the village deity, and so could not be alienated. Since honour and privilege are so closely associated with being a ganvkar, not knowing where one’s place of origin was can be a troubling question. Why do some people not know—or even have—a village of origin? It is not popularly known nor is it generally recognised that most persons were never ganvkars, or that village deities change.

Some time ago, while engaged with a friend in fieldwork, we had to interview a priest. On learning that we had come to do research, he welcomed us warmly, and asked my friend where she was from. She told him the name of her village and gave a short description. Then he turned to me and asked where I came from. I said I was from Porvorim. He asked me again where I came from originally, and once again I told him that I was originally from Porvorim. “Porvorim?” he said. “But they are all settlers there? Where are you from originally?” he asked again.

Since childhood I have been left with the pain of having no ancestral home. During Ganesh Chaturthi, when all my friends went to their native place, I used to wonder where my native place was, or why was it that I alone did not have a native place to go to? My cousins and paternal uncles visit our house for Chaturthi. Ever since my father bought our house in Porvorim, we have been celebrating Chaturthi here. To me, Porvorim is where I come from. But my roots lie elsewhere.

Since Porvorim mainly consists of settlers, through this study I aim to find out about the people who, like me, came to stay in Porvorim. Where are they from originally? Why did they come to Porvorim? How was Porvorim formed?

I conclude by attempting to answer the question―Is Porvorim now my ancestral village? Can it be called the ancestral village of people who now stay there?

An indigenous view of the village communities of Goa:

An indigenous perspective on the formation of Goan villages is based on the connections that exist between people, deities and villages. In the mid-sixteenth century, when the Portuguese rulers launched their campaign to convert their Goan subjects to Christianity, they destroyed the Hindu temples at the centre of every village under their control. The devotees saved the deities of these temples by transporting them to neighbouring states that were outside Portuguese control. These deities retained a substantive link with their village of origin through a series of rituals and exchanges that sustained the connection.

Family names tell part of the story. For example, a Raikar hails from Raia, a Mardolkar from Mardol, and a Shirodkar from Shiroda.

Down the centuries, Hindus and Catholics have maintained their common ties with their village of origin. Even though Portuguese policies have separated Catholic from Hindu, and village deities from their native soil, a Goan who has moved to another place still links his Goan identity to a particular village and to the particular deities of that village (1). Family names tell part of the story. For example, a Raikar hails from Raia, a Mardolkar from Mardol, and a Shirodkar from Shiroda.

Alto Porvorim (2) village, the part where we live, was formed in the 1970s, more than four and a half centuries after the Portuguese invasion of Goa. It is situated in Bardez, one of the four ‘Velhas Conquistas’ (Old Conquest talukas) of Portuguese rule, the other three being Ilhas (Tiswadi), Salcete, and Mormugao. Both Hindus and Catholics are found here in great number.

Most of the people who now stay in Porvorim used to stay in rented quarters in Panjim as they worked there. Even after several years of staying in this village they still maintain the link with the deity and the village of their origin.

In order to understand the formation of Porvorim village I interviewed five people from my neighbourhood, both Hindu as well as Christian, who have been staying here since the 1970s and have seen how the village developed.

How Porvorim was formed

Rajesh Madkaikar has been staying here since 1973. Before that he was staying in a rented space in Merces, a village near Panjim. I asked him what Porvorim was like when he first came to stay. He said, “This area was barren, without population. There were no facilities or electricity, and the roads were not developed. This was a forested area. We could hear jackals howling. At that time this was a scary area.”

Madkaikar says that in those days it was not possible to buy a house from one’s earnings. However, people who were renting always felt that they should have a house of their own, so the Government of Goa came up with a hire-purchase scheme through the Housing Board, a government-run organization concerned with creating and developing residential housing. Houses then became available in Porvorim without difficulty, so Rajesh and his family decided to come here.

His main house is in Madkai, but nobody lives in it at present. However, the entire family goes there to celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi and other festivals. He still maintains a strong connection with his deity and his native village even though he has now lived in Porvorim for 39 years.

Another resident, Matthew George, was originally from Kerala, but came to Goa to teach at a school in Panjim. He lived in a rented house in that city but the accommodation did not suit him, so he began looking at villages where he could buy a house. Porvorim was coming up at that time and a Housing Board colony was being formed here, so in 1973 George came to see the construction work in progress. He was not happy with what he saw, so he decided against buying a house. He had second thoughts in 1975 and decided to go ahead and buy the house he is now living in. He has been living here since then, except for a short period when he went to Africa.

“The place was a forested area,” he says. “As you come from Panjim, right from the bridge up to Porvorim was all forest. There were a few houses on the left side. There was a place called Teen Building; there were three buildings over there, but there were no houses on the right side. Slowly the Housing Board Colony came up and things changed. Now this place is full of houses. Those days there were wild animals moving around. There were jackals and wild boar and different types of birds. Slowly as the population increased, the animals had to move to other places and they slowly disappeared. I don’t see any of those animals now as there are houses everywhere and people have come to stay.”

Or is it that the ancestral village shifts with the family, making a person less and less attached to one’s land and its people?

Matthew George’s parents, brothers, and sisters are all in Kerala and he often visits them. He is a practicing Roman Catholic and goes to church regularly.

George has three children, two sons and a daughter, and none of them stay in Porvorim. The eldest son is in the Navy, the second son is a doctor working in Chennai, and the daughter is married and lives with her family in Singapore.

The question is, where is the ancestral home of the George children? Is it in Goa or in Kerala? They were born in Porvorim; they did their schooling and went to college in Goa. They celebrate Christmas in Goa. They visit Kerala on rare occasions, paying a sort of family visit for just a few days. Will these children visit Kerala in the coming years? Will the family link with the village in Kerala remain the same? Will the coming generations feel the need to know where their ancestral village is? Or is it that the ancestral village shifts with the family, making a person less and less attached to one’s land and its people?

Another respondent regularly visits his kuladeva (3) (family deity) but does not know any history with regard to his family. Generally it is said that a person’s original village is where his or her kuladeva is. I recently went with a doctoral student to do fieldwork in a remote part of Ponda. The village was predominantly Hindu with only two Catholic houses. One of the respondents there said that the village mainly consisted of brothers and sisters; the residents were all related. They, the Hindu and Christian villagers, had all been one family at some point in time. Conversions in the past often took place with the priest coming with a handful of grain or bread and throwing it on the villagers. Since contact with bread or grain which the priest had touched was viewed as being polluting, people on whom the grain fell were not accepted back. Their forefathers were the same, but as generations passed, the families became more and more nuclear. Still, all their neighbours realize they are actually related.

An elder in my family who also lives in Porvorim told me, “We are staying in the Porvorim Housing Board Colony since 1976. Before that we were staying in Panjim in a very small rented house. In 1972, the Goa Housing Board had advertised in the papers that those who do not have houses will get houses. I applied for a house and I got it.”

This relative considers the rented house in Panjim to be his ancestral house and Panjim to be his ancestral village. All his childhood was spent in Panjim with his siblings. He does not know his father’s main house but says that his mother is from Dhargali, Pernem. “We are from the Konkan region,” he says. “My forefathers must have migrated from various areas of the Konkan and ended up in Goa. I do not know anything about it. We visit our kuladeva every year in Maharashtra but I know nothing of my family or my old village or the people over there. No one stays in Panjim now. The house is closed. My younger brother was the last one to stay there. He must be having the keys.”

He believes in God. He says that all of creation is God’s work. He visits the temple occasionally. Shri Mahalaxmi was their gramdevata (village deity) when they used to stay in Panjim but since he has been staying in Porvorim his gramdevata has changed. He does not visit temples regularly but he says that his God is with him always.

He then goes on to describe how Porvorim was when he arrived. “In the 1970s, the Housing Board began constructing houses and developing this plot. When we came to stay in 1976, we could hear jackals wailing at 7 o’clock in the evening. We could also see them moving about, and we used to get scared. Now there are too many houses to the extent that there is no place [for wild animals] to move around. The Housing Board [Colony] has become broader and due to this there are lots of problems coming up, water and garbage being among the biggest.”

He explains why he took a house in Porvorim. “The Panjim house we lived in was not our own; we wanted to have our own. The Government of Goa was providing people with a nice opportunity to build houses for people who had none. Due to this opportunity we were able to take this house.

Porvorim was not too far from Panjim and we wanted our own house somewhere around Panjim. That time there were few people here. Some bought a house and lived in it whereas some gave it for rent. There were lots of meetings taking place. People from different communities came together to celebrate Diwali, Christmas, Holi, etc.” Later, his brothers bought houses in another area of Porvorim.

In my fieldwork, while interviewing one homeowner, I found the residents held divergent views in speaking about their place of origin or their ancestral house. The husband said that he bought a house in Porvorim because he wanted the family to have an independent home. But while he said that their ancestral place was Merces, the wife interrupted to say it is Canacona. The family bought a house in Porvorim in 2005; before that they were renting in another part of the village. When the husband said that the family visits Merces every Sunday, his ten-year-old daughter looked at him with surprise.

Though Porvorim was a forested area, Maria Fernandes, who has been staying in the village since 1979, says that she did not see any animals around at that time. She says Porvorim was cool and quiet. There were very few people staying there and relations between them were good. Her family is originally from Batim, Goa Vellha. Their relatives and cousins still live in Batim and Maria’s family visits them sometimes. However, before coming to Porvorim, they were staying in Panjim in government quarters. After buying the Porvorim house they were planning to rent it out, but since they now owned a home the Government did not allow them to stay on in the government quarters. Maria Fernandes is part of a devout family and they visit their church regularly.

Another family has been staying in Porvorim since 1984. They too stayed in Panjim before they came to Porvorim. They bought a house in Porvorim and gave it out on rent while they continued staying in the rented house in Panjim. The Porvorim house was rented for eight years. It was only after the respondent’s husband retired from his job that they came to stay here. Their ancestral house is in Hatullem, Narvem. They go there only when there is some occasion like palki and zatra or any religious function.

The wife says that when the Government built the houses they were few in number; also, there were no compound walls and no roads. Anyone could get to a nearby house from any side. People later built compound walls and then roads came up slowly. Many people bought houses here but continued staying on rent elsewhere, as most of them were holding government jobs. They wanted a house in Panjim, but it was not possible to do so. So they thought of buying it in Porvorim as it was near Panjim.

Can Porvorim be called the ancestral village of people who stay and will continue staying here?

The people who now stay in Porvorim came from various villages for the purpose of employment. Most of them know where their ancestral village is and who their family deity is, and visit them regularly. But now families have become more nuclear. As one respondent put it, once upon a time all the villagers were relatives and cousins, but as generations passed, they separated. This, of course, does not apply to Porvorim.

In the course of time Porvorim may become the ancestral village for the present generation.

Porvorim is now not the same as before. Most of the families are nuclear. Their children are moving out to gain an education or pursue a job. Sometimes they go out of the state, sometimes they even go abroad. It appears that as the family structure changes and the world becomes a smaller place, family links are reduced. Still, people remain aware of their ancestral village and they do visit it.

In the course of time Porvorim may become the ancestral village for the present generation, a place where they celebrate their main festivals as there is no one staying in their villages of origin, no one there to look after the houses. In coming years those villages may become barren. Then the need may arise to develop housing board colonies in those villages, complete with compound walls and roads.

I noticed a difference in the way Hindus and Catholics regard their ancestral house. While Hindus do not regularly visit the temple, they maintain a strong link with their village, often adopting the village name as their own―Mapshekar, Narvekar, etc. Catholics visit their ancestral village more frequently than Hindus do, not to go to the ancestral temple but to meet their family. While most of the Hindu village houses are closed, there is usually someone staying in the ancestral homes of Catholics.

Conclusion

I tried finding out where my ancestral village was. I may not have researched enough. I am not satisfied by saying that Porvorim is my ancestral village. Being a Padgaonkar, could it be that we originally came from a village called Padgao, and if we did, exactly where is it? Perhaps someday I may realize that there are no roots to the origin but only fruits of one’s origin scattered everywhere, not wanting to know where they came from.

Postscript: As I look back…

My family members tell me they do not know where we come from; there is no record of our place of origin. Finding my ancestral house was more of a concern for me than for my siblings. Maybe my personality has added to the concern. I wrote this article two years ago, but as I look back now, this question has become less important for me. Perhaps I am adjusting to, and accepting, the idea that there is no real final answer to this question.

I am grateful to Dr Joanna Coelho for encouraging me to submit an earlier version of this piece as an assignment for a course in ‘Understanding Goa’ during an MA program at Goa University.

Notes

1. Paul Axelrod and Michelle A. Fuerch. Portuguese Orientalism and the Making of the Village Communities of Goa, Ethnohistory, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Summer, 1998), pp. 439-476.
2. When I use the term Porvorim, I mean Alto Porvorim. Downhill on the way to Mapusa there is a small ward called Porvorim which has many old houses as well as new constructions coming up there. Old Porvorim was originally a ward (vaddo) of an old village called Serula, and is currently a ward of the village of Socorro.
3. A kuladeva is the deity that guards over a family and a gramdevata is the sovereign deity of the village.

Preeti Padgaonkar is a teacher, writer and poet. She has taught in various Higher Secondary schools and colleges in Goa. Her special intellectual characteristics are her interest in visual Sociology with a special reference to moving images. She takes a keen interest in innovative teaching programmes and research-oriented activities. Writing has allowed her to be free and kept her spirit connected to the world.

Attribution

My Ancestral Home: Where Is It?, Preeti Padgaonkar. 2009. An edited version of a Class Assignment at the Department of Sociology, Goa University. The work is licensed under the Creative Commons, copyright with individual author. Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License.