Our family name is Badgi. No-brainer there. Badgi is our ancestral village. It is a typical small village on the banks of the river Krishna, in Bilgi Tehsil, Bagalkot, Karnataka, India. Our family’s claim to fame is the ancestral Kesavadeva temple which was excavated within our premises during our forefather’s times. The temple itself was built by Chalukya Vikramaditya VI in the 11 th Century AD. For those of you interested in knowing about it more, check this link https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/100289/10/10_chapter%204.pdf it has a reference to this fact. Every year in December there is a Utsav(festival), which is conducted and all the descendants of the Badgi family descend on Badgi to participate in the proceedings with great fervour also with the prospect of meeting all the cousins and extended families. However, it was a curious aspect for me to note that half our extended family had the family name as Gudi, while half of them were Badgi? ...
Narayan Rao and Ganga Bai were worried about their youngest daughter Subhadra (Subakka). She was the youngest of their 6 surviving children. She was all of 16 years and they were very aware that all the elders in the community were already questioning their intentions of keeping the girl unmarried for so long. What could Narayan Rao and Ganga Bai do? She was their ugly duckling. Small pox had ravaged her face and her dark skin did not help her either. Neither was she intelligent nor had the worldly knowledge of her elder sisters. Ganga Bai blamed herself for going easy on her youngest . Did her leniency make her a dunce head, she wondered. Bande Rao was a fair young handsome man who had retired from army and was now working in a transport company. He was a disciplined man but had a fiery temper. His face went red every time he was angered, which was quite often. He had lost his mother at a young age and lived with his father. He was of marriageable age and...