AN ENCOUNTER WITH A SNAKE

I recall one story from my childhood, when I was around ten to twelve years old, with my Uncle, an incident for which I myself was a witness and I too have narrated it oft-times, time and again over a cuppa coffee. So it is a snake story. By the way never make the mistake of telling any South Indian a snake story, specially a coastal dweller, plus coconut trees owner, for he is sure to come up with one more horrible, and lengthier than yours. Mine goes like this. 

It was a lazy summer holiday evening in one of the typical rural village on the well spread canvas of South Karnataka in my district place called Udupi, which stood firm on an easel of mother nature. It was just about to get dark and my uncle was narrating his stories over an encircled group of his cousins, sipping the evening cuppa filter coffee in the courtyard. Today his discourse was on how to not get scared, but get hold of a snake and encounter it properly, sparing its and our own life, in case you spot one. 

My aunts were poking fun of their boastful 'story teller' brother and were busy giggling and putting off his heroic antics and techniques and skills that he was presenting with panache, even as he walked gently to and fro in a straight line, tangent to the ladies sitting in a circle. He had an in born authoritarian quality.

Rice based, fried white rounded and other coiled and spiked yellowish snacks, resembling dough artifacts of some creepy creatures were kept in the middle. The larger spiked ones with multiple coilings were called Chakli for its sheer geometry, I reckon, and the smaller simple oval ones, made out of small dough lines pinched to join their termini, were called Kodbole. Hearing my Uncle's snake story, the chaklis and kodboles, which I had picked up to eat, appeared weird to me, untill its visuals and taste imagined induced saliva in my mouth and luckily my cravings dominated my imaginations. "Why do south Indians prepare such creepy structured snacks," I tossed one into my mouth, and started grinding and chewing the snack (see even why the hell it should called 'snack' in english, I must say "thindi" I paraphrased to myself) inside my mouth, as I kept guessing in my mind and kept listening with all my ears to my Uncle.  

All the gossip mongers were holding a miniature steel glass, which had outwardly protruding edges on the top. The coffee consumers, skillfully hooking the glass in a delicate balance between their thumb and middle finger, and the steam with its exotic aroma, rose between their fingers and entered their nostrils, an act intentionally done, as a culturally cultivated habit. They occasionally sipped the frothed decoction, which was skillfully blended into an exotic whiff, with cow’s milk drawn moments ago, before it was boiled on a gas stove in the open kitchen, which was clearly visible from every corner of house. A lone single burner stove ran on Gobargas pipelines fed into it. The plant employed the dung of the same cow which delivered the milk, she was named Laxmi, by my late grandfather.  

Ladies were busily single handedly picking the centrally placed snacks with ease, as they uninterruptedly took turns in first snapping, then skillfully throwing the coiled snacks from the plates into their mouths as they chatted along. Adding to the ambience in thick bass tone, one could hear the lone raw material producer, granny's Laxmi mooing intermittently, in the background, from the hut were it was tied for most of the day. It mooed affectionately as its calf was allowed to suck its teats first, followed by Granny who hand-sucked the same teats, after carefully washing with warm water and collecting almost half a bucket full of its milk, for guests evening coffee.The remnants will be curdled and served as final serving with rice at dinner. A south Indian will feel horribly incomplete if he does not finish the day with curd rice, before he retires to bed. Still as the big old cow, which to me, seemed as just another Granny's daughter. It mostly mooed lovingly, as if it approved the collective human consumption of its precious secretion, also as if it was showing gratitude towards the extreme care and reverence it got from its care taker, my granny. My granny always chatted with Laxmi sometimes angrily,mostly lovingly but always carelessly and Laxmi always mooed with affection without fail. My granny was well versed and comprehended its varied emotional sounds. She could recognize Laxmi's pain, anger and happiness just by reading her mooing frequencies. For me and the rest of the lot, it was just a dumb moo. 

Immersed in the conversation, my uncle was clad in a sparkling white Dhoti, which had a streak of golden border, and it shone gleaming in alliance with the evening sunrays. He was strolling to and fro the courtyard borders. Golden borders sidelining his dhoti, glittered with the setting sunrays as he came forward and, his legs formed a shadowy silhouette through the semi transparent dhoti, as he walked away towards the setting sun. He was looking in his full elegant form as he held one free end corner of his dhoti inhis hand. He was well known for his exaggerated notes whenever he started to blow his trumpet. Today had he been alive, he would have proudly presented his stories with a ppt or on fb live, in elegance and with style, sending all the novice amateurish fb 'live'rs out of the world for a toss, for he was no less than our own Rajani boss, we his blind followers. He was pioneering guru of todays 'Bhakt' sampradaya.

Unheeding his younger siblings' gigging he continued, "see if you see any slithering long reptile creature crawling zig and zag, first ensure it is a noiseless creature, then all you have to do is go behind it, slowly grab hold of its tail, pick it up, and into the air it must go fast, but slowly it must come down, as you should hurl it back on ground and gently smash it one, and two and three times. Just as you bang your saris while washing on the washing stone." He was now clearly enacting and practically demonstrating the scene, with an invisible snake in his hand banging it on the ground. We south Indians are very loud and dramatic when it comes to explaining things using the body language dynamics.

Down south snakes are revered and by any means not killed but caught and sent off to nearby jungles or uninhabited dense vegetation, which ever reached first by walk or cycle. A dead one even if seen lying, is sent off to heaven with all thirteen day like rituals, similar to those carried out for deceased human beings.I was all ears as my Uncle boasted further in continuation,"by following this gentle technique" he said, "the most dangerous of the snakes will lose its senses and will forget to do anything, forget biting or hissing, for few minutes it will forget that it ever was a snake. The skeletal bones take time to recoil back to form their interlocks", he was desperately trying to be scientific and practical at same time, "then you put it in a gunny bag and take it away before it regains it consciousness and identity." All his sisters laughed cacophonically in dismissal.

"Oh! Ho! Ho! Easier said than done Anna ~ smirked one of my younger aunts, sarcastically to her white dhoti clad brother. Her more experienced brother responded, "You silly little girls will never understand these life survival techniques," said he a fifty year old man to his forty plus old siblings. "When it comes all you can do is scream, Anna! Anna! (he made weird faces) and just keep calling me or any other men nearby, but you will never try to learn and be brave, all the time just giggling endlessly". He was clearly agitated by their sarcasm. However, good sarcasm blended with genuine wit is always the hallmark of a true South Indian. They never keep remarks thrown at them, but instantaneously give it back to the opponent in a jiffy, or sometime later in their life, and thus such duets are lifelong affairs. Rarely things go overboard and such confrontations are taken in the best of everybody's humour and intellect.

It was still a nascent month of May, hot and humid in this part of south Karnataka. The sky was spread with carpets of stark white clouds, which gushingly floated along with the coastal winds. The clouds at this time of the year were cottony white and bright, on a dark blue background, and they reflected all the visible rays of sunlight quite blindingly in the afternoons. It was still a couple of months time away before these will be painted dark black and become more fiercer, carrying gallons of the elixir of life, arriving with terrifying light and sound effects, as they announce their arrival from Kerala, known to the world as monsoon rains. The white clouds had slowly turned golden and then gradually orange, as the evening progressed. The large and round bright summer orange Sun was gracefully sinking behind. Within seconds it transformed into faintish pink as it sulked further in the distance, behind the silhouette of arched coconut trees, which ruffled endlessly over the crystal clear horizon. Summer twilight is bright and remains for a while in these parts of the world.

All my Uncles and Aunts always bonded well and strong in thick and thin of times throughout their life and it was clearly evident every year in summers as they all gathered in any one of their ancestral houses down south. Most of them had hard times and struggled in their youthful hay days, eventually succeeding in establishing Udupi Hotels all over the world. It was only because of their visionary and nomadic efforts, today they and we their progenies could afford the luxury of such a beautiful evening gatherings, cuppa coffees, snacks and chattering beneath a sunset, in ancestral courtyard or on a pyol (the cemented bench like structure in the verandah or near door outside which accommodates four to five people for sitting) when the members attending such conferences were less or were meeting hurriedly. No wondering or reasoning is needed to understand, why every hotelier aspires his next generation to study more and not venture into hotel industries. Also no wonder that today genuine, authentic, indigenous Udupi Hotels are gracefully setting down like the evening sun behind, in the horizon only never to rise again. Authentic Udupi hotels are today fast replaced by pseudo look alikes with masala liquid dals served as sambhars, which are equally relished by self declared pseudo junk foodie experts. I recall my Uncle saying once, "Son! all that twinkles above are not stars". "Then what are those Chickappa?" I had inquisitively enquired trying to comprehend the underlying philosophy."Satellites!", he had bluntly replied without looking at my perplexed face, "and they are junk in our space" he had replied with concern.

In form of an invisible super woman my granny not only kept refilling fresh batch of snacks, but also ensured the exotic brown liquids in steel glasses were emptied only on consumer’s contentedness. Equally invisible in her movements and acts, she like a secret agent, kept picking up the glasses, stealthily washed and inverted them for drying on the shelves, without letting her daughters know. She kept them ready in case someone arrived unannounced. She was well aware that she was not rich enough to afford a stock pile of extra coffee glasses, like the richer hotel owners who were chatting in the courtyard. These mid forty "silly little girls” would only scream with a formal guilt, “Amma! We will wash it na-why bother?.” Only once, few years back, granny had seriously allowed that, only to find thick and sticky residual coffee at the bottom of unattended coffee glasses under the tree, in the morning lying in the courtyard. From that incidence onwards had firmly decided not hear nor hire such empty and formal urban lip services. 

The cousins sat and chatted further into the evening, nostalgically recalling past events, marriages, functions, gold jewelry designs, latest births and deaths, newer recipes of traditional south Indian dishes, which actually were older than my old granny in the house. As farthest a sight could stretch, the sun was disappearing past the dry, thirsty and muddy ploughed rice fields. All the astronomical spectral theatrics up above the sky were slowly diminishing and the planets only king star, the sun, gradually decided to call it a day, replacing his brightness with, grayish darker skies and tiny little twinkling tots appearing one after another as darkness engulfed. I was wondering which were satellites and which were stars. 

The rice fields were still visible with heaps of intermittently but equidistantly placed biofertilizers delivered from hut of Laxmi and her relatives around the neighborhood. Majority of houses had Gobar Gas plants. I professed topics on eco friendly sustainable systems in four walled smart classrooms, using animations and PowerPoint’s, sheer theory and my granny had perfected the art of Gobar Gas and Biofertilizers practically without theory or principles, in solid inputs and partnership with Laxmi. The thirsty fields desperately waited to absorb the monsoon showers, which recently were becoming more and more unpredictable with advancement of GPS and other weather prediction technologies. Granny claims Grandpa never needed weather reports, nor his monsoon predicaments ever failed. "Changing times!” everybody sighed.

Post monsoon it is a entirely new world, more densely populated with Botanically yet unrecorded flora and fauna. After rains the Western Ghats start spreading their rich canvas even further, announcing their omnipresence capabilities all over the region. Naturally, stories of encounters of slitherers, creepers, crawlers, stingers and biters become weirder and horrible and common. My uncle was a wholesaler, a distributor with many myriad stories in his store. Actually this narrative skill was one, which every south Indian is usually well equipped with. Snake encounters are not new to a south Indian. Along with snakes, scorpions and other deadly insects, keep appear out of the blue, all round the year out of nowhere suddenly from the lush green surroundings even in mid of summer.

Few more glasses of coffee and snacks were served to the unquenching bellies. All the cousins sat through the evening on a blue and red stripped old cotton mat, whose loose ends were tied as knots at the both ends, dually serving the purpose of strength and aesthetics. We all sat in the large open courtyard of a small thatched roof house of my grandma. Few uninterested, listening deficient kids were playing cricket with locally available mini coconut balls and coconut stem shelved bat, which was slightly curved and broad at bottom, gradually tapering towards the top, serving as handle. Cricket is second religion of South Indians, they can completely waste five days watching the test match ball to ball, and waste another five more analyzing the test match between Australia and Zimbabwe. On a match involving India, I can write a book. Anyway, the coconut stem bat was one piece natural wonder of my childhood and even today with equivalent peers, it served well and good. The kids had crafted the bat on their own after procuring it from the fallen branch of a long bending, ageing and visibly tired ancient coconut tree in the backyard planted by my grandfather. Owing to age difference, I was not interested in their game. Moreover I always loved to listen, since childhood and loved hearing such narrations and on this particular evening I had bartered my ears to his snake story. With rapt attention and curiosity, I proudly listened to his unbelievable tricks and techniques.

Suddenly an unexpected episode took place for the gathering, but it was quite 'not-anything-new' for a South Indian. All my aunts jumped up shrieking, jerking off and lifting up their silk saris, which too had gold borders, displaying the matching lehngas beneath, all up to their knees, as they screamed "SNAKE! SNAKE! ANNA~ SNAKE!." And Lo! There it was a four to six feet rat-snake trying to demonstrate, what snake dance is all about. It was equally stunned to see itself caught in such a sudden human pandemonium. It was difficult to deduce who was frightening whom and who was getting frightened from whom. A creepy crawler had prematurely adjourned all the cousins’ coffee meeting, ensuring complete turmoil.

I had already vanished screamingly sticking my face into behind my granny's back. Granny was a cool customer. "Is it even a snake at all, poor fellows these stupid peacocks have already scared them away" "Definitely it is not a cow granny", I yelled almost fainting. The other day when a flock of peacocks amused me, granny shoed them away, initially cursing them and later on transferring the curses to humans for cutting jungles and rendering the peacocks homeless. A young me never understood then, neither granny's behavior nor how peacocks drove away snakes, which increased the menace of rats, which devastated the crops. Ugh! Beauty to my eyes and a routine menace to the toiler of the mud.

Down south there is only one snake, which is a real snake, which is feared because it is revered and is revered because it is feared. When you utter the word SNAKE, you are considered a fool if it is not the King Cobra himself. Rat-snakes appearances are taken so lightly, that they must consider themselves lucky for not being used as tying or drying ropes. They only get rare due respect as snakes only from occasionally visiting city buffoons like us. Such is the unfussy approach towards any slithering reptile, which is not a King Cobra. Exception to the rule is rattle snake, which is feared as it is equally deadly. However he is a noisy customer and announces his arrival quite from a distance by rattling its tail, unlike the gentle, soundless and majestic approach of the King. The king approaches silently and then announces its arrival with a deadly hypnotizing hiss. Usually a cool customer, King Cobras, the Lord Shiva's necklace, never initiates any attack, but just retaliates as a defense response to its opponent.

In five seconds flat the ladies disappeared inside the houses, granny stood there itself, relaxed with hands on her hips and with me fearfully stuck on her back. This gave me a clear picture of what happened next. My uncle who in these five seconds, had strolled away, came running in to the snake and jumped over it, his intention being to get behind it. As the snake swirled rapidly trying to move further away, my uncle lifted his dhoti, first with his left leg, then holding the borders and swiftly tying the cloth tightly around his waist, making it half worn and legs below the knees clearly visible. This style is patented South Indian, a step towards comfortable movement for any action intended. Without an iota of second thoughts or doubts, my Uncle swiftly picked up the rat-snakes tail, swirled it up in the air and still firmly holding its tail bought it down on the ground, and gently smashed it one, and two and three times. Just as he was preaching a few moments ago. “Anna! Anna! Leave it. Don’t - Don’t screamed the sisters from the window sill of the house. Eldest of them almost fainted as he had forgotten to take her BP tablet.” In the courtyard, the snake lay dizzy, unable to figure out what next, as my Uncle shouted, “Bring one bag someone, will you, Quick!” One of my aunt who had just arrived before the coffee party started, and had emptied her clothes, bought the jumbo duffel bag to him in sheer confusion, to which my Uncle screamed back,“What should I do with this, go inside it or what? go bring a smaller gunny bag to trap the snake." Before he could finish his words, Granny appeared in front and threw an jutebag, I was shell shocked, as I was all the time thinking, I was behind granny’s back. Oh! My god, when did she leave me alone?!” I was thinking as I ran to one of my aunts. Putting the snake inside the gunny bag, my uncle tied a jute thread to the neck. The reptile inside did not move for a while. 

Relieved he threw that bag in the middle of courtyard and washed his hands and legs and then subconsciously opting for a semi-bath, poured a bucket of water, voluntarily drawn from the well, on his shoulders, drenching his now semi-naked body and his dhoti. After instantly finishing all the washings he entered the house valiantly, “Just as you bang your saris while washing on the washing stone,"he said looking heroically towards all his sisters, “You shouldn’t fear you see. It’s plain and simple and that’s what I was explaining to you.” His 'silly little sisters' were still frozen in a state of shock as if a snake had just left after smelling them, for it had just did.

After finishing one more cup of coffee he took out a bicycle and tied the bag to the carrier and pedaled away into darkness to leave the reptile safe into its habitat, behind those trees where the sun had set, near the river, where frogs croaked all night long. A horrified reptile's good night's dinner was ensured. Granny instructed him to bring some coffee powder from the grocery, his way back. As night extended further, all finished their dinner in turns, on plantain leaf sitting in padmasan on the ground adjacent to the kitchen. Men ate first and the ladies second. Curd made from Laxmi’s milk came as the last serving. Adjacent to the hall, with a common wall was Laxmi’s hut; she mooed for one final time for the day, as I felt sleepy on my granny’s lap. Grany's fingers ran through my hair gradually sedating . That night granny’s hut was filled with gaiety and laughter, as it was going to be a long late night for the ever loving cousins, with each one having his and her own special recap versions of the recent snake saga.

My Uncle along with my father was an equal inspiration to me. My father and he lived jointly as a family, running the present Udupi hotel in Parbhani for many years, throughout their entire lives. Not a single day we children ever sensed any dissimilarities between them. His four daughters, and myself share the same bond as he shared with his cousins. We love and live similarly as they did over many evening cuppa coffees. Many people still do not know whose son I am and whose daughters my sisters are. My uncle dared things, he took difficult decisions, he travelled the world, taught me many skills of life and trade, just as my father did. "PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH" was one of them, which stuck to me like the golden linings of his dhoti. Though I still dread snakes, he was a hero to me who dared to catch snakes fearlessly, for his name was Neelkantha.