The White Cobra’s evening visit!

Authorship and Copyright Notice : All Rights Reserved : Satya Sarada Kandula

“Kanna and you stay upstairs! I am locking all the doors, there is a Cobra inside the house”., said Kanna’s Thatha.

“Kanna, thatha is alone downstairs with a cobra, he has locked us out!” Amma told her son.

“Really! Let’s go down!”. Kanna raced down the stairs and found the door locked.

“Even at 70. thatha thinks he is a hero! I am a young man of 20. In every other house they would call their young men first when there is danger. I will have to hang my head in shame in front of my friends.” said Kanna, as he and Amma sat fretfully on the staircase outside the door.

“I have localised the Cobra now. It is behind the dining hall closet. I have lighted a tortoise mosquito coil. It hates the smell and is staying behind the closet. I called the society people.. some one should be here soon” said Thatha.

“Wear your shoes Kanna, I will change into some day clothes and wear my shoes too. Your Ammammma will be back by 8.30 pm and thatha will have to open the door, we can sneak in”, said Amma.

Ammamma came as predicted, pooh poohed Thatha’s injunctions and went straight to her downstairs bedroom. She locked herself in there with the television and a cell phone. No trivial Cobra was going to keep her away from her tv serial. Anyway, her husband and grandson would know what to do.

Thatha showed Kanna the cobra. Kanna was very excited. “I’ll call my friend Vel, he will have the phone number of a snake catcher!” Amma was surprised,  ”Why would Vel know?” she asked. “Oh he knows everything”.

Kanna called Vel, got the number of the snake catcher, Mukunda and called him. He told Thatha that Mukunda would charge 1000 rupees whether there was a snake or not. Thatha’s society friends came, bu they had no idea who to call or what to do. They were scared of snakes and waited outside.

Kanna called Mukunda and Mukunda promised to get there in 45 min. Then he got himself a stick to guard himself, a book to read, a chair to sit on and sat reading with a happy smile on his face. Amma sat next to him on the steps, watching the closet.

Thatha ran back and forth checking alternately on the society friends outside and the snake status inside. He was very impressed with Kanna and his cheerful bravery. Ammamma kept calling kanna from inside her bedroom for updates. Kanna’s friends were excited too, and there were was much SMS traffic. Vel worried about the Cobra. “I hope the poor guy isn’t too uncomfortable”, he said.

Mukunda arrived with a stick, gloves and a blue bag.  The cobra was too slippery for the gloves and stick. So Mukunda threw them off and caught the snake by the tail. It is a cobra, he confirmed. Thatha told him about all the cobras he had encountered since childhood.

Mukunda took the cobra out and made it bite the bag a few times. That way its venom was used up. Amma saw for the first time in her life, the beautiful mark under its hood. “What a beautiful Cobra, not like the horrid ones I have seen in my nightmares”, she thought.

Then Mukunda lifted it up and put it in the bag. He put the bag in his motorbike side case, receive his payment and distributed his visiting cards. “I will come anytime of the day or night, you may feel free to call” , he said.

Amma was concerned about the snake. “What will you do to it? Will you extract its venom for antidotes?” she asked this fair, tall and professional looking snake catcher, who looked like he stepped out of an MNC or out of discovery channel. “It is illegal to extract snake poison. I will keep it at home till I collect 8 such snakes. Then I will release them in Bannerghatta National Park, where they can live freely. I don’t know why humans fuss so much about snakes. All they want to do is to eat frogs and sleep. Check my web-site to learn more”, he said.

“I have seen him on TV”, Kanna said. “That is how I knew about him and called Vel for his phone number”. Amma was impressed by Kanna’s knowledge, action and smile. “This is exactly how Krishna faced all danger, with a smile”, she said.

Kanna listened to all Thatha’s snake stories that night, including the one where a snake held its hood up over his head. “That is why you became a great man,” Amma told her father. Ammamma laughed. “No, that is why he got to marry me”, she said.

That night, it was Kanna, who put his mother to bed and tucked her in. “Thank you for saving my daddy”, she said, “And thank you for saving the cobra. Some ordinary construction workers may have just killed it.”

“It was nothing mommy, anyone could have done it!” Kanna said.

“Anyone could have, maybe. But none of us had the knowledge. You knew and you acted. You are the hero today evening”  Amma said.

“And Vel, and Thatha and actually Mukunda”,  Kanna said as he went to his room to sleep.

Authorship and Copyright Notice : All Rights Reserved : Satya Sarada Kandula

Mukunda’s Contact Information.