Shantadurga on the second step

It’s a bittersweet feeling approaching Sawardekar Wada—a yellow, heritage house situated in the heart of Sanvordem village. From a structure that once played home to about 16 families, each comprising a minimum of three members, it has now been left with only two families—six members in all.
Two abandoned mining trucks, and a few cars—belonging to villagers that find the home a convenient place to park as they go about their daily chores—dot the entrance, clearly ignoring three prominent wooden signs that say ‘parking for Sawardekar Wada residents only’.

The over 400-year-old house is divided into four separate sections, each one with its flight of stairs leading to its particular entrance, but at the same time, each section is also interconnected. If you enter the main section of the house and peek out of the window, you can see the railway track and bridge on the east. When you reach the second section and look outside and notice the Dattatreya temple, you realize you’ve effortlessly covered a distance that takes five minutes by car, and you still have two more sections of the house to cover. This is finally completed after a 15-minute walk through a maze of rooms.
“When I was a child, my cousins and I would play hide-and-seek here. The seeking would go on for hours,” laughs Mandar Sawardekar, an eighth generation son of the house.
On the ground floor, each section of the house is centred around a square-shaped inner courtyard surrounded by corridors, while the first floor has around 20 bedrooms—80 in total. But what really stands out is a framed sketch of the Sawardekar family tree, hung in the main section of the house.
Mandar explains, “My great-great grandfather Sardar Vitoji had a son Gunaji who in turn had four sons—Shivram, Minbi, Sadhashiv and Vital—each of whom lived in one of the sections of the house. I’m a descendent of Minbi.”
While Mandar moved to Margao in 2007, as his job demanded it, his father’s cousin, 60-year-old Purshottam, his wife Mangal, and daughter Deepa, stayed put and now live in the main section. “We have a family trust where money for the restoration and renovation of the house comes from, but it’s Purshottam who actually executes the works. He takes care of everything,” says Mandar, casting a proud glance at his uncle.
In between latching the adambos (a wooden beam that passes from one wall to another and serves as a lock) on all the doors, Mangal says, “I’ve thought about shifting to a flat in town, but I’m so used to my routine and life here that it’s difficult to actually make the move.”
Admitting that it gets lonely in the house sometimes, Deepa says she’s never thought about moving, “I’ve grown up here, so I have a certain sentiment to this place.”
While it is quiet at Sawardekar Wada most of the year, festival time brings in new energy. “Ganesh Chaturthi is my favourite time here,” says Mandar, the other family members nodding in acknowledgement. For three days, until the visarjan (immersion), over 300 family members converge at the home—the adults catching up in one corner and the children and their toys filling up unoccupied corners.
“It reminds me of my time growing up here… evening talks between the men on one side and the women on the other, while all of us cousins would play outside. Each time we cousins get together, in fact, it’s so much fun; it’s as if nothing has changed,” says Mandar with a smile. He adds quickly, “It’s proof that Chaturthi is a fun time at the Sawardekar Wada when you have my sister and cousins finishing visarjans in their husbands’ homes and rushing here to participate in ours.”
To make the festivals worth everyone’s while doesn’t come easy for the family members who are constantly worrying about the house’s restoration. Not a lick of paint out of place, Mandar explains that the house was renovated in 2007, when the woodwork and pillars were done anew while retaining their ancestral appeal. “We made sure we didn’t ruin the house’s charm,” says Mandar.
The care it was treated with is perhaps why Sawardekar Wada has made it to the big screen. “It was used in the Bollywood flick, ‘Singham Returns’, and the Goan telefilm ‘Sutkechi Zuzari’,” says Mandar.
As Mandar packs up to head back to town, climbing down the stairs to exit his home, he intentionally skips the second step from the top. “Vitoji was a sardar in the Kadamba dynasty. So the Ranes (dacoits) would always try to loot our home. Once during a gunshot battle between our men and the Ranes, legend has it that the goddess Shantadurga appeared on the second step and scared off the dacoits. Since then, we believe it is sacred,” he says, adding, “Till three years ago, you could actually see the bullet holes.”
As he drives away, he’s wistful. “I’m so attached to the house and I will definitely move back here after my retirement. I love old houses and I’ve been to almost every one in Goa. But I’ve never seen one bigger than this. Have you?”