This is more of a personal account of one of our family stories, and the reason we are ardent devotees of Lord Shiva. We mythologically trace our roots to the age of the Ramayana, as descendants of Sage Vasistha's lineage from Sage Saktri, while historically we have records of our immediate family as early as the time of Babur and of our ancestors from Kanauj. Family Origins: This was Gaur Banga, or Bengal. My forefathers lived in the Jessore district of present-day Bangladesh. They were descendants of Shaktri, the son of Ved Vyas, whose family lived in Kanauj, U.P., and we are direct descendants of Sage Vasistha, who taught Rama the Vedas. The Shaktri clan travelled from the Vasistha Ashram near the River Beas to Kanauj in UP (present-day Uttarakhand) to teach and practice medicine there. They were Vedic-age Vaidyas. They were learned people of the Brahmin class trained to cure difficult diseases. Pandit Saktridhar Sen and his family were invited to King Adhisur's court in Ben...