Strange Encounters with Snakes

Soumya tells us about his many encounters with snakes, replete with wit and humour. An exclusive for Different Truths.

I always had a strange affinity for these slithering creepy creatures. I am not a Parseltongue, but the selection that would put me in Slytherin house.

I feel it is my fondness for Shiva and affinity for his Prasad that is the cause.

My first encounter was in childhood, when I was asked to field being the youngest when the kids were playing cricket, and the appearance of a snake made everyone run away, but not knowing that it was considered dangerous, I hung around and watched it wriggle away.

Numerous encounters later in life didn’t make me change my opinion, and I would request snake charmers to let me handle their pets, and they usually did, for a fee.

I tried to get my kids to get over the fear by handling snakes, but apparently, they found it traumatic, and it was one more reason for hating me as a teenager.

In my walks in the wooded area nearby, I often encounter snakes, but they always give me right of way and slither away into the undergrowth.

There used to be some fraud sadhus who sought alms for Nagdevta, and would extort people by threatening to throw the snakes at them or in the car. When they tried it with me, I calmly picked up the snake and drove off, having him run after my car pleading for its return. I did, but after making him apologise and promising to stay out of our neighborhood.

Only once did I get attacked by a cobra, completely due to my fault, and here’s the story. Obviously, I lived to tell the tale

It was a balmy winter afternoon in Delhi, and I was lying on the hostel (which we called Rez to sound like Cambridge) steps reading Wodehouse in the sun, and the principal passed by, asking what I was reading, and saying jolly good young man, as this was Stephen’s, when, on stretching my legs, I heard a sound like escaping steam.

Looking up I froze. For the coiled hose pipe near my feet on which I had decided to rest my legs, had transformed itself into a hooded cobra, hissing and swaying, prepared to strike.

Instantly, survival instincts took over, and without thinking, instinctively I broke the world record for lying long jump, hit the lawns, and rolled away screaming, ‘snake’.

This attracted the attention of some more guys, and we saw the snake slithering down the steps, having struck the place I was lying down in a fraction of a second ago.

There were some guys returning from hockey practice, and a daring fellow called chinki bordoloy… college guys give insensitive nicknames, I was commie bong for instance… took a stick and with a single stroke killed the poor fellow.

Next everyone deliberated as to what to do with the carcass and noticing that someone was studying with an open window, on popular agreement the bloody carcass of the snake was slung into his room, with the gratifying response of a guy screaming snake-snake come rushing out.

I felt bad for having disturbed the poor snake in its siesta by rudely treating it as a footrest, and then causing its death.

Never ever since have I been party to harming any of my fellow Shiva bhakts of the creeping kind.

Photo by the author, picture design by Anumita Roy, Different Truths