“This
is for Kala Nag,” said Gunga Ram, pouring the milk into the saucer.
“Every night I leave it outside the hole near the wall and it’s gone by
the morning.” “Perhaps it is the cat,”we youngsters suggested.
“Cat!”
said Gunga Ram with contempt. “No cat goes near that hole. Kala Nag lives
there. As long as I give him milk, he will not bite anyone in this house.You
can all go about with bare feet and play where you like.”
We were
not having any patronage from Gunga Ram.
“You’re
a stupid old Brahmin,” I said. “Don’t you know snakes don’t drink
milk? At least one couldn’t drink a saucerful every day. The teacher told us
that a snake eats only once in several days. We saw a grass snake which had
just swallowed a frog. It stuck like a blob in its throat and took several days
to dissolve and go down its tail. We’ve got dozens of them in the lab, in
methylated spirit. Why, last month the teacher bought one from a snake charmer
which could run both ways. It had another head with a pair of eyes at the tail.
You should have seen the fun when it was put in the jar. There wasn’t an empty
one in the lab. So the teacher put it in one which had a Russel’s viper. He
caught its two ends with a pair of forceps, dropped it in the jar, and quickly
put the lid on. There was an absolute storm as it went round and round in the
glass, tearing the decayed viper into shreds.”
Gunga
Ram shut his eyes in pious horror.
“You
will pay for it one day. Yes, you will.”
It was
no use arguing with Gunga Ram. He, like all good Hindus, believed in the
Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, the creator, preserver, and destroyer. Of
these he was most devoted to Vishnu. Every morning he smeared his forehead with
a V mark in sandalwood paste to honour the deity. Although a Brahmin, he was
illiterate and full of superstition. To him, all life was sacred, even if it
was of a serpent or scorpion or centipede. Whenever he saw one he quickly
shoved it away lest we kill it. He picked up wasps we battered with our
badminton rackets and tended their damaged wings. Sometimes he got stung. It
never seemed to shake his faith. More dangerous the animal, the more devoted
Gunga Ram was to its existence. Hence the regard for snakes; and above all, for
the cobra, who was the Kala Nag.
“We
will kill your Kala Nag if we see him.”
“I
won’t let you. It’s laid a hundred eggs and if you kill it all the eggs will
become cobras and the house will be full of them. Then what will you do?”
“We’ll
catch them alive and send them to Bombay. They milk them there for anti-snakebite
serum. They pay two rupees for a live cobra. That makes two hundred rupees
straightway.”
“Your
doctors must have udders. I never saw a snake have any. But don’t you dare
touch this one. It is a phannyar—it is hooded. I’ve seen it. It’s three hands
long. As for its hood!’ Gunga Ram opened the palms of his hands and his head
swayed from side to side. ‘You should see it basking on the lawn in the
sunlight.”
“That
just proves what a liar you are. The phannyar is the male, so it couldn’t have
laid the hundred eggs. You must have laid the eggs yourself.”
The
party burst into peals of laughter.
“Must
be Gunga Ram’s eggs. We’ll soon have a hundred Gunga Rams.”
Gunga
Ram was squashed. It was the lot of a servant to be constantly squashed. But
having the children of the household make fun of him was too much even for
Gunga Ram.They were constantly belittling him with their new-fangled ideas.
They never read their scriptures.
Not even
what the Mahatma said about non-violence. It was just shotguns to kill birds
and the jars of methylated spirit to drown snakes. Gunga Ram would stick to his
faith in the sanctity of life, he would feed and protect snakes because snakes
were the most vile of God’s creatures on earth. If you could love them, instead
of killing them, you proved your point.
What the
point was which Gunga Ram wanted to prove was not clear. He just proved it by
leaving the saucerful of milk by the snake hole every night and finding it gone
in the mornings.
One day
we saw Kala Nag. The monsoons had burst with all their fury and it had rained
in the night. The earth which had lain parched and dry under the withering heat
of the summer sun was teeming with life. In little pools frogs croaked. The
muddy ground was littered with crawling worms, centipedes and velvety
ladybirds.
Grass
had begun to show and the banana leaves glistened bright and glossy green. The
rain had flooded Kala Nag’s hole. He sat in an open patch on the lawn. His
shiny black hood glistened in the sunlight. He was big—almost six feet in
length, and rounded and fleshy, like my wrist.
“Looks
like a King Cobra. Let’s get him.”
Kala Nag
did not have much of a chance.The ground was slippery and all the holes and
gutters were full of water. Gunga Ram was not at home to help.
Armed
with long bamboo sticks, we surrounded Kala Nag before he even scented
danger.When he saw us his eyes turned a fiery red and he hissed and spat on all
sides. Then, like lightning Kala Nag made for the banana grove. The ground was
too muddy and he slithered. He had hardly gone five yards when a stick caught
him in the middle and broke his back. A volley of blows reduced him to a
squishy-squashy pulp of black-and-white jelly, spattered with blood and mud.
His head was still undamaged.
“Don’t
damage the hood,” yelled one of us. “We’ll take Kala Nag to
school.”
So we
slid a bamboo stick under the cobra’s belly and lifted him on the end of the
pole. We put him in a large biscuit tin and tied it up with string. We hid the
tin under a bed.
At night
I hung around Gunga Ram waiting for him to get his saucer of milk.‘Aren’t you
going to take any milk for Kala Nag tonight?’
“Yes,”
answered Gunga Ram irritably. “You go to bed.”
He did
not want any more argument on the subject.
“He
won’t need the milk any more.”
Gunga
Ram paused.
“Oh,
nothing. There are so many frogs about. They must taste better than your
milk.You never put any sugar in it anyway.”
The next
morning Gunga Ram brought back the saucer with the milk still in it. He looked
sullen and suspicious.
“I
told you snakes like frogs better than milk.”
Whilst
we changed and had breakfast Gunga Ram hung around us. The school bus came and
we clambered into it with the tin. As the bus started we held out the tin to
Gunga Ram.
“Here’s
your Kala Nag. Safe in this box. We are going to put him in spirit.”
We left
him standing speechless, staring at the departing bus.
There
was great excitement in the school.We were a set of four brothers known for our
toughness. We had proved it again.
“A
King Cobra.”
“Six
feet long.”
“Phannyar.”
The tin
was presented to the science teacher.
It was
on the teacher’s table, and we waited for him to open it and admire our kill.
The teacher pretended to be indifferent and set us some problems to work on.
With studied matter-of-factness he fetched his forceps and a jar with a banded
Krait lying curled in muddy methylated spirit. He began to hum and untie the
cord around the box.
As soon
as the cord was loosened the lid flew into the air, just missing the teacher’s
nose. There was Kala Nag. His eyes burnt like embers and his hood was taut and
undamaged.With a loud hiss he went for the teacher’s face. The teacher pushed himself
back on the chair and toppled over. He fell on the floor and stared at the
cobra, petrified with fear.The boys stood up on their desks and yelled
hysterically.
Kala Nag
surveyed the scene with his bloodshot eyes.
His
forked tongue darted in and out excitedly. He spat furiously and then made a
bid for freedom. He fell out of the tin on to the floor with a loud plop. His
back was broken in several places and he dragged himself painfully to the door.
When he got to the threshold he drew himself up once again with his hood
outspread to face another danger.
Outside
the classroom stood Gunga Ram with a saucer and a jug of milk. As soon as he
saw Kala Nag come up he went down on his knees. He poured the milk into the
saucer and placed it near the threshold. With hands folded in prayer he bowed
his head to the ground craving forgiveness. In desperate fury, the cobra hissed
and spat and bit Gunga Ram all over the head—then with great effort dragged
himself into a gutter and wriggled out of view.
Gunga
Ram collapsed with his hands covering his face. He groaned in agony. The poison
blinded him instantly. Within a few minutes he turned pale and blue and froth
appeared in his mouth. On his forehead were little drops of blood. These the
teacher wiped with his handkerchief. Underneath was the V mark where Kala Nag
had dug his fangs.
