The Narrow Fellow in the Grass

It was a dark, dreary afternoon. My husband’s regiment had moved from Srinagar to Ambala Cantonment and we had just set up house. The day after day of rain was getting on our nerves,…and then the snake got in.
Number one son gave the alarm and the younger one who is brave in word but not in deed, climbed on the bed and screamed with full throated ease. I ran into their bed room. My first instinct was to calm him down and get the little one out of the room. Once outside, he became his old, bold self, and ran out to call for help Bhaiya, our man-of-all-work, scuffled up with a pathetic looking twig in his hand but was sent back to get a bigger one by my elder son..
He was happy to retreat. He peered through the window into the bedroom and wondered aloud, “ Could it have been a ‘girgit’ or a chameleon? There are plenty of them in the garden, you know.”
Number one Son was stung by this doubt; he knew what he had seen and gave Bhaiya an earful. Thereafter Bhaiya disappeared. When he finally got back, we saw that he had taken time not only to find the right-sized stick but also to polish it to perfection. He had brought two other Bhaiyas with him, and they too were armed with fierce- looking sticks. All three entered the room stealthily as if looking for terrorists and explosives. Number one son joined them. As they started moving furniture here and there, the younger one and I peered through the glass and remote- controlled the whole action. “ Look under the cot, lift that box, don’t go near the curtains”..I shouted out.
Suddenly everyone became alert. I saw the slithery creature crawl out from under a box towards one Bhaiya’s shoe-clad feet. He promptly jumped on to the bed ( spotlessly clean only a moment ago. My mind too jumped-from the problem of snake to the problem of mud stains on my Kashmiri bed spread.
Now the snake played hide and seek with its adversaries, scattering them to all parts of the room. At last, one Bhaiya, braver than the rest, hit it on the head and it stopped moving. The one on the cot now came down. “Don’t kill it,” he said, “you will get a curse. Just take it out and leave it”
The others opposed this non- violent movement. They hit it repeatedly, reducing its head to a bloody pulp .My son brought it outside on a stick. It was a krait.
The one who preached Ahimsa came to me with a worried frown. “Madam, it is wrong to kill a snake. It is God’s own creature. You must do puja as retribution,. he announced. We all laughed.
When my husband came home, we narrated our action- packed adventure with a lot of embellishments. The incident made me muse on all the stories and poems in which a snake appears as a hero. There is Emily Dickinson who came face to face with a snake and felt “zero in her bones”. Then there is Khushwant Singh’s Gunga Ram who fed the Kala Nag milk everyday and prayed for its patronage .Ironically,Gunga Ram was killed by the very same Kala NAg. There is also D.H. Lawrence who ill treated his royal guest and atoned for his paltry sin.
By way of atonement I decided to turn our puny krait into the hero of my next writing But the story does not end here. Two days later, we all were all sitting glued to the TV, enthralled by the adventures of Moulder and Sculley of X Files fame. Suddenly from the bathroom came the cry, “Saamp” It was my son again. The younger one remembered all my earlier instructions, but in reverse order.. He jumped down, put on his slippers, screamed, then ran out to call Bhaiya.
By now we were all attuned to the alien presence. Hubby, who was at home, took command and demanded a big stick. Son Number 1, an expert snake –catcher now, ran out to get one.Bhaiyas in plural arrived and it looked as though they had been ready and waiting for the command .I glared questioningly at the practitioner of ahimsa who carried the stoutest stick of all. He looked down sheepishly.
The search got under way. Three Bahiyas along with my husband and son entered the tiny bathroom, which meant there was not even space for a snake to crawl .I sympathized with the narrow fellow who was confronted by a grossly superior force. But miraculously, he had vanished.
The search party now opened the outer door and ventured on to the verandah. They shone torches into every possible hidey hole , much like the search operations to flush out terrorists. My son grabbed a newspaper and a box of matches and rushed out .For the next half hour I could hear shouts and yells emitted under varying degrees of excitement and fear. The suspense was over only when they came in, carrying a fierce looking black snake, with cuts and bruises all along its length.
But now, my son declared,” This is not the one I saw in the bathroom. That was brown, this is black.”By now it was mid night and the Bhaiyas were tired and sleepy. They were quite prepared to compromise on the colour scheme. But my husband was adamant. He ordered the search party back into the bathroom.
The narrow fellow did not stand a chance this time. They spotted him at once, hiding in the shank of the toilet, half inside, half out. By now even the proponent of ahimsa had turned against the snake. The snake was cut into two pieces, and so was the water closet, shank, lid and all. Our shock at the broken water closet far outweighed the triumph of killing the snake. Bhaiya was quite sure that the broken water closet bore testimony to the wrath of god. He came to me and said, “Madam, the snake is God’s creature. Unless we appease Nagraj, he will make us pay for our sin”
I agreed. My husband was muttering about a bill no less than 2000 for the water closet. Indeed we would have to pay.
The next day I wrote to my mother. There is a temple near our house in Kerala .where a special sanctum is dedicated to Nagraj.
I wrote to her to give an offering of milk, coconut, turmeric or whatever snakes like best and also to offer an elaborate puja. Then, at someone else’s advice, I bought five kg of onions, removed the peel and lit fire to it, in order to ward off evil. I keep reiterating the fact that I am an educated woman, disinclined to superstitious beliefs. Yet when another well wisher advised me to keep a bowl of milk at the hedge every day, I gave in again. I am prepared to go to any lengths to keep those narrow fellows in the grass where they belong. The thought of them entering the house gives me “zero in the bones”.

Shailaja Chandran
This article by Shailaja Chandran was published in The Indian Express, Chandigarh Edition, 15 Sept, 1996.