Golden Snake

Do you love snakes?

I’m not talking about loving wild animals like snakes and taking steps to preserve them etc. But I am talking about actually loving them, like one might love a cat or a dog and wanting to pet them and look admiringly day and night?

I think most of your answers will be no. Who can love a slimy, venomous creature which doesn’t even look beautiful or attractive or even majestic but rather scary! I once heard a news of a guy being arrested for keeping lots of snakes in his house secretly. People raised eyebrows when they heard this and he was immediately labelled as crazy!

We also see in the television every other serial beautiful damsels emerging as naagins in search of their naags or to take revenge of some sort. People enjoy such stories and watch with a lot of excitement and craze. But do we love snakes even after that?

Today I will tell you one such story which is derived from real incidents although I have definitely spiced it up to raise the fun quotient.

It was our winter vacation. Although the weather was crisp and cold late evenings and early mornings, the afternoons were warm and cozy. It was a ritual for me and my little sister to bask in the sun after lunch. We ate delicious winter oranges and mostly played or read stories to each other lying down on our straw mat. When the sun rays penetrated our skin inside the sweaters, we would get sleepy and doze off with the books on our faces.

Another charm of the vacations was the visit of our grandma. We used to be all excited since she would make varieties of tasty dishes for us. She would also join us in our afternoon fiesta. In the afternoons she would make varieties of pickles and papads and let them dry in our front yard in the sun. She was a great story teller . She told us ghost stories while coating the mangoes and gooseberries in salt and turmeric and spreading them out on big steel plates. At other times she would sit and watch us play while she knitted sweaters with skilled hands. It used to amaze us how her needles moved perfectly without her even seeing them.

My mother didn’t inherit these qualities from Grandma but she had another passion,gardening. We used to live in a big old fashioned house, the kind which has a garden all around surrounded by trees like mango, guava, jackfruit and a big front yard. She was delighted when we moved to this house because there was ample space to pursue her hobby. She made a rose garden in the front yard. There were varieties of roses of all colors and shapes. The rose bushes were decorated nicely with ornamental orange bricks around them. The pathway from our door to the front gate was spread with small fancy pebbles and all along the path she planted big orange gerber daisies. The whole garden was dotted with flowering plants of various breeds like jasmine, marigold and pansies.

Our garden was a treat to watch except for the fact that there stood a huge saal tree awkwardly in the middle with its thick bark and big leaves. The tree must have been a hundred years old and very majestic but it was no match to my mom’s beautiful garden. Moreover it attracted lots of insects and rodents increasing the maintenance work for my mom. That was the reason she had even appointed a gardener Radhe to take care of the garden. Although she watered the plants herself daily but the gardener was kept to regularly weed the plants and trim the bushes and keep the plants free of insects.

But I loved our saal tree. I used to sit under it in my straw mat and played hide and seek with the sun rays filtered from it’s dense leaves.

One afternoon we were playing in the sun when my grandma was making arrangements for making ‘peetha’ which used to be our favorite. ‘Peetha’ is a special sweet made with rice, jaggery and coconut filling steamed in a big bowl. She fell short of sugar and requested me to go buy some immediately. The lazy me didn’t want to leave the afternoon fun and go but the ‘greedy for peetha’ me won over and I jumped on my cycle seat. My little sister signaled me to buy kurkure which was her favorite. I said a big ‘No’ on her face and rode away smiling seeing her grumpy face.

I was back within half an hour. My grandma and sister were both standing in the verandah waiting for me. I parked my cycle outside the gate and was walking in the pebble pathway when I heard a shriek. It was my sister. I waved and showed the kurkure packet to her but now she was crying loudly and babbling something. Her two pointy pony tails on the top of her head looked even more pointed and teardrops were falling like raindrops.I got confused. That packet had never failed to impress her, till now. Then I noticed my grandma. Her eyes were popping out from behind her glasses and her mouth was half open and she was pointing towards the saal tree.

My gaze followed her finger and my legs froze at what I saw. Just under the saal tree, around two feet from me, there lay a huge snake! It was around six feet long and very thick and it was the color of gold. The head of the snake was stuffed inside a mice hole near the trunk of the saal tree. It was gleaming in the afternoon sun.

Now my sister’s ramblings started making sense to me. She was shouting, “Please save my didi! The snake will eat her!”.

I smiled weakly thinking how can that snake eat me! But then when I again looked at it I had doubts. Well it might! You never know…

I stood there with the kurkure packet in one hand and the sugar in a polybag hanging in another. I didn’t move since that might attract its attention. All I did was stare. I stared at this amazing creature. It looked dangerous and beautiful at the same time! Its silky golden body shone in the sunlight.

My sisters shriek had quite the capability. It was able to bring all our neighbors out of their homes. Even the passersby had stopped and were trying to peep inside the gate. Suddenly from among them emerged our gardener Radhe. All were scared to come inside but he wasn’t. Not because he possessed some extraordinary courage but since he was under the intoxicating effect of liquor. I could see his red eyes and unbalanced gait.

Then he did the unthinkable. Before I could stop him, he picked an ornamental orange brick from under the rose bush and threw it hard at the snake! The snake got startled and pulled out its mouth from the hole. It started moving haphazardly and finally lurked into the boundary hedges surrounding our house.

Even we were startled. I ran towards the verandah and held my sister. She had stopped crying but a small teardrop was still stuck to her round flushed cheeks. All pairs of eyes of the audience to this unplanned drama were searching the snake. Radhe displayed heights of mad courage by poking the bush with a stick to see if the snake was hiding there.

But the snake was nowhere in sight. It had vanished.

After sensing that the danger was gone, our neighbors also came to our veranda and started chatting excitedly. My grandma described them the incident the way she used to tell us ghost stories. They listened to her with rapt attention. It seemed as if this incident was a welcome change in their morbid lives. They gave lots of advices and suggestions and displayed their knowledge on the slimy being.They bombarded her with numerous questions.

“Was it pure gold in color?”

“What was the length?”

“Was it hooded and how was the tail?”

“Are you sure it was not naag? If it was then the its companion naagin will surely come to take revenge!”

“Did you just hit or kill it? If it’s alive then it might itself seek revenge.”

“You should have made sure its dead.”

Finally after lots of serious discussions it was concluded that the snake was “sonar dhemna” which means the “golden snake”. It is usually not poisonous so it doesn’t bite but has a powerful tail. It tackles its enemies with its tail. One good point was also made. There is a saying that if there is a “sonar dhemna” near your house then it’s a sign for prosperity.

Both of us kept listening to all these jabberings and tried to make some sense out of it. I thought that if it was really a sign of ‘prosperity’ then after this incident our ‘prosperity’ would definitely go down the drain.

My sister’s train of thought went to an entirely different way than mine. She said,

“What if it came to take revenge? It definitely got hit but didn’t die….but I don’t want it to die…poor creature …..what was its fault?…why did Radhe uncle hit it?”

I just answered,

“Yes you are right…but the only thing we can do now is be careful for few days ok?”

The coming days my whole family, especially we both sisters remained super alert. The afternoon fun was canceled. We sat huddled up inside the house near our bedroom window to get a flicker of sunlight. Grandma still kept the pickles and papads out to dry to our amazement. When we objected she laughed and told that she had seen enough snakes in her life to get afraid of one coming to take revenge now.

But both of us remained cautious all the time. Whenever there was a need to go out, I would pick my sister up in my arms. She was tiny and light so I didn’t have any problem (after all I was the big sister) and moreover she promised to scan the area around for any imminent danger while I walked. She made me jump unnecessarily many times whenever she saw anything shining on the ground. This scheme worked till the time our school reopened.

The snake was never seen. We also grew more comfortable and less scared as the days went by till we were convinced it won’t come again. My sisters demeanor changed dramatically. From extreme scare it changed to extreme love! She started feeling pity for the snake because of the fact that it didn’t take any revenge of any sort and hid somewhere with its wounds.

I don’t know if it was from this time or later that she grew too fond of snakes. All would get surprised hearing she liked snakes. After all it was no cat, dog or parrot. It’s a venomous and dangerous creature. But what can we say. It might sound as a cliche but I have just one way to explain it,

“Love is after all blind!”