Family Myths

We are a family of devout Catholics. The “we” does not include me, speaking of theological preferences. I am just a chronicler. I started by claiming we are devout Catholics. We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. We do not take his name in vain. We also believe that God talks to us through dreams. We believe our dead never truly abandon us and intercede for us with the one true God of the Israelites.

We believe Christ died for our sins and the Day of Judgement will be one long day. And we believe in talking serpents. Not just the one in the book of Genesis. Serpents. The ones that went forth, multiplied and remained cursed for eternity.

We come from doughty rural stock. My father’s family belongs to a fiercely self-reliant caste of farmers, the Christian Nadars. My mother’s father was a village headman. I could climb a tree by the time I was seven. I have watched my cousins fetch water from a ground well, while I stood looking into the depths, fascinated, as the bucket fell into the darkness and was slowly pulled up, swaying heavily with gleaming, bucket-coloured water. A few years later, I remember sitting on the handle of the hand pump when I got tired of pumping water, gleefully waiting for the gush of water as the handle went down with my childish weight. I remember picking cotton with my aunt and cousins one summer. And I have personally attended the birth of a calf and watched a goat deliver its kid. Every fourth summer of my childhood, I’d become a villager.

But I have never seen a snake, especially a talking one. I’m more than happy with talking animals in cartoons and my youngest sister. This is a story from the Family’s memories.

My mother’s grandmother woke up early. Her day began every morning even before the earth had turned our hemisphere towards the sun. In the pre-dawn darkness, she would commence with the day’s work as the stars glinted from a great distance. The kitchen was a thatch-roofed shed built a few paces outside the house. The bathroom was the neighbouring farm.

She remembered that she hadn’t cleared the wood burning stove last evening and decided to rekindle it to boil water for the morning ablutions. She placed the aluminium pot above it and walked away to fetch water from the well. When she returned and had begun to transfer the water into the pot, it moved a little. She stopped, intrigued, wondering if she was pouring the water too hastily, worried that the pot might topple over and she would have to draw more water. She decided to try again, but slowly.

The pot wobbled again but this time so did the few pieces of wood lying under it.

She placed the earthen pot with the cold water on the floor and brought the kerosene lamp hanging from one of the low rafters close to the wood. It moved again. She removed the aluminium vessel and slowly took out the pieces of wood. Lo and behold, nestling in the warm ashes was a snake. (In telling this story, my mother never mentioned what species? Cobra? Python? Mamba?). Poor grandmother was scared and started to back away from the stove, trying to muster the courage to raise an alarm. The snake slowly lifted its head. (Cobra?). A voice was heard. “Wait”. Grandmother’s heart skipped a beat. “Wait”. She looked about her and made the sign of the cross as she continued backing away. “Do not be afraid.” We are Catholics, remember. We are used to being terrified out of our wits, then assured that we should not be afraid because epoch-changing things will happen to us, but that is so ordinary!! (Roll eyes!)

But my grandmother thought fear had made her foolish. She paused and looked at the snake in the light from the lamp. It was the snake, for it spoke again. (Did its lips move? Do snakes have lips?). For a child whose staple bedtime stories were from Aesop’s fables, this has always been my favourite part. The snake told my grandmother (in what tone? pain yet authority? pleadingly? menacingly? slipping over sibilants?) that there was a thorn in its tail and it had spent the night in great discomfort. Would she be kind unto one of God’s creatures (even though cursed) and help pull it out?

(Was there an ominous pause? Grandmother and snake staring into each other’s souls? Silence punctured unexpectedly by a cow sneezing somewhere close by?). My grandmother took pity. The snake was soon restored to its sinuous agility. It thanked her and promised never to harm anyone from her family and disappeared into the undergrowth beyond the fence.

I have (almost) never doubted this story. I don’t know what policies snakes have regarding diasporic descendants but I am not likely to inquire into it any time soon.