The History of my Family Name

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? That is also understandable, because the Gudi which is temple in Kannada, but why??

I heard the story from my grandmother for the first time and many versions of it later, but I will try to present it to the best of my understanding, the story behind our family name Badgi!

My grandfather Shrinivasachar Badgi , was a brash, reckless and hot-headed young man. I was told he did not do any significant work. But was sure to make everyone aware who he was and commanded everyone to respect him. Already married to Padakka, my grandmother with four kids and one on the way, he had little interest in the mundane affairs of the family.

On the fateful day, Shrinivasachar headed out on his horse with no real agenda and when he returned, he had to go through the main entrance or Agasi Bagilu as we call it in Kannada to enter the village. To this day it exists as if bearing testimony to this incident. It is not a massive gate as you would imagine. Even today we park our cars and vehicles outside this gate and must walk to the temple.

Near the main gate a poor farmer was loading his bullock cart with grains. My grandfather ordered him to give way so he and his horse could pass. The farmer asked him to wait till he finished loading as he had little more to go. That was enough trigger for Shrinivasachar, he got down from his horse and ensued in a fist fight with the poor farmer. Few blows were exchanged and in the heat of the moment, Shrinivasachar bit off the nose of the poor farmer.

What could have been more shameful than losing a part of your nose? All the elders in the village were furious and decided to lodge a case against Shrinivasachar for this act already upset with his bullying and overbearing ways.

Overnight Shrinivasachar was advised to move to Bagalkot with his family to escape the wrath of the villagers. One of his relatives happened to work in the Tehsildar’s office.

He came up with a grand plan of changing the family name from Gudi to Badgi and proving that Shrinivasachar is not the same man who bit the farmer’s nose. The case did not proceed any further.

We were stuck with the family name Badgi.

Later Shrinivasachar moved to Dharwad and settled down there with his family. It changed the course of their life and Shrinivasachar had to look for a job to feed his large family. He started working at the Dharwad Municipality or Boroughs as they were called then.

Many years later the same man with bitten nose, who I assume learnt to live with himself would do odd jobs at the temple. We never knew we had such a sordid connection with this man.