Caught in the worldly wide web

The change has come 10 years after Parashar was ridiculed for wanting to computerise the family trees of all the people who came to him. Today priests (many of whom are graduates) in the pilgrimage city are slowly succumbing to the wonders of the World Wide Web.

‘‘I was just out of college when I first started toying with the idea,’’ remembers Parashar. ‘‘At that time I had no idea about computers or how to write a software. It has taken me 10 long years to finally develop a software to trace the ancestors of any family who has been coming to us to perform various rituals.’’

At the ghats, generations don’t just come to perform last rites. They also come to trace their family roots. Priests maintain immaculate records of every person who comes to them to perform rituals.

‘‘We have stacks of record books, each with detailed accounts of various families, their gotras, village address and other details,’’ explains Satish Shukla, president of the Nashik Purohit Sangh. ‘‘Now we are exploring the idea of computerising all the data.’’

Now with Parashar’s software, priests with fuzzy memories can trace the roots of their client at the click of a button. It saves time and reduces the damage to old record books due to excessive handling.

‘‘Often, people come up to me and ask if their grandfather also came to the ghats,’’ says Parashar, sitting in his Gulalwadi house. ‘‘I can enter the vaguest detail and within seconds they will have their entire family history.’’

Parashar comes from a family of priests with an impressive clientele, including many big Bollywood families. Though he carries forward the family tradition, his father is amused by his son’s gizmos.

“Actually no computer can beat his fantastic memory,’’ agrees Parashar. A novice with computers to start with, Parashar has now honed his skills and transferred half his client list onto his laptop. But he still maintains his record books, as a back up.

The priests’ main worry is a virus attack. ‘‘Even if we all start carrying laptops, no one is going to stop maintaining their record books,’’ says Shukla. ‘‘What if everything on the computer is erased by a virus? It is a risk no priest will take.’’

In the by-lanes of old Nashik, between the wadas and tangle of boys playing street cricket, nearly 3,000 priests cross paths with signs of technology all around. After years of holding out, they are finally logging on.