Skip to main content

A Curious Case of Indian Bosom Serpent

"O, 'tis a mere nothing! A snake! A snake! The commonest thing in the world. A snake in the bosom — that's all" 
- Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent by Nathaniel Hawthorne [Google books link]

On the morning of 24th April, I reached Jammu to attend the wedding festivities of a cousin sister.

Since it was still morning, ritually, I had a cup of tea and opened the local newspaper- Daily Excelsior, the most widely read newspaper of the city. It offered usual unusual dose of death and mayhem. Sad, sad news. Mini-wars and min-conquests. National dailies have got nothing on them. Farther you get from the center, near the edges, grimmer the picture gets.

But on that particular day the paper, on its front page no-less, offered something bizarrely, slitheringly different.

While reading the News piece, please do keep in mind: this is the region where in ancient times the cult of Snake, Naga worship flourished. In fact, in Bhaderwah district of J&K people still perform ancient rituals of song and dance on certain days to please the snake gods whose leader is Vasuki Nag. Some trivia for filmy people, remember Rajkumar Kohli, the maker of all time classic Bollywood snake (revenge) film Nagin (1976), he too belonged to this region. And generally, everybody knows, in India snakes are still revered.

Since I grew up in Jammu, I have my own fair share of strange snake stories, and yet I was surprised to realize that snakes are still putting up a fight in this rapidly urbanized part of the region. I thought all snakes had been purged. But snakes seems they are still fighting the man. And what a fight! A suicide attack, no less.Well, it wasn't actually meant to be a fidayeen attack, but...anyway, here's what happened in what I like to call 'A Curious Case of Indian Bosom Serpent':

In the late hours of the night, a three foot long snake saw a five-foot-five man sleeping, near a comfortable ditch on the side of the road,  It's mouth was open. Too open. An invitation. Snake knew what he had to do. Such opportunities come but almost never in a snake's life. If everything goes fine, he won't have to work for the rest of his life. Carefully the snake crawled down the man's throat and reached its stomach. But the man turned out to be rather short, as, even though snake was about to reach the bottom of this man's stomach, his tail was still dangling out of its mouth. Not good. Even as snake tried to adjust and head for the bottom, make room for his tail, a sudden obnoxious smell hit the tips of his forked tongue. But he couldn't stop his descend down the stomach, his senses were already failing and he was now sliding, not slithering, he was falling down. A man's stomach smells obnoxious anyway, but as the snake's head hit and broke the surface of the liquid pool at the bottom of the man's stomach, the snake recognized the putrid smell. Alcohol. Darn that stupid man! A drunkard. If you think alcohol - that too, desi - smells bad, come and smell it inside the stomach. It is hell. The snake, his trail still dangling out of the man's mouth, was now drowning. He was fast loosing conscious. The man was still comfortably unconscious. If its conscious did stir-up for a second or two, the man must have thought it was bad eggs from that Jalandhari Egg'n'Chicken soup.
Death came slowly to the snake. He held his breath for long. He could. He could delay. But not death. He knew he was dead even if they caught him alive. Some alcohol did make its way to his stomach too. He thought of eggs. He wished he was a water snake. 'Can I crawl out of this one? How far is the other hole, the way out? Nah, that only happens in fairy tales', he thought. Death came slowly to the snake. In its last moments, he was convinced it was a bad idea from the start - this desire to be a bosom serpent, or may be he should have stopped at the bosom and not be too greedy, stupid and venture into this pit. People should quit drinking. Snake tried to move. No use. More alcohol entered his body through the nostrils. It was good.

In the morning, people discovered a snake's tail sticking out of a man's mouth. Panicky, mystified, surprised, secretly delighted people called the poor man's family. Together they pulled out the snake from its tail. The snake was found dead. The man was taken to a government hospital and survived.

The incident was talk of the town for a couple of days.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Famous Old Faces of Doordarshan

Some people recall the faces and some people recall the names. Here are images of some of the famous readers and presenters of Doordarshan down the years. If you recognize any of them, leave a comment. [ Update 1 : Most of the faces now have names thanks to helpful comments by olio-gallimaufry ] [ Update 2 : Included image of one of the earliest presenters, Gopal Kaul. Send in generously from personal collection by son, Ashutosh Kaul. Sept, 2010.] [ Major Update 3: Got a tip-off about a documentary about the famous faces of Doordarshan from the makers   of     “The Golden Trail , DD@50 :Special feature on Golden Jubilee of Doordarshan ” from which these caps were taken. I managed to catch the incredible documentary and am adding some more faces/name and part of the docu here. New ones can be found after the image of  Narotam Puri. 30th Oct, 2010]  Pratima Puri. Believed to be the first Doordarshan reader.

Indian Cigarette Vintage Ads

He put a cigarette in his mouth and, as a matter of silent routine, offered one to Gwyn, who said ‘No thanks.”Richard looked at him.”I packed it in.”"You what?”"I stopped. Three days ago. Cold. That’s it. You just make the life choice.” Richard looked up and inhaled needfully. He gazed at his cigarette. He didn’t really want to smoke it. He wanted to eat it. Almost the only thing that he still liked about Gwyn was that he still smoked…Paradoxically, he no longer wanted to give up smoking: what he wanted to do was take up smoking. Not so much to fill the little gaps between cigarettes with cigarettes (there wouldn’t be time, anyway) or to smoke two cigarettes at once. It was more that he felt the desire to smoke a cigarette even when he was smoking a cigarette. The need was and wasn’t being met… While it would always be true and fair to say that Richard felt like a cigarette, it would now be doubly true and fair to say it. He felt like a cigarette. And he felt like a cig

Kishore Kumar, Yodel-ay-ee-oooo Songs, A List

*Updated with corrections pointed out by Bart Plantenga , author of some incredible book on Yodeling including Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World. -0- Kishore Kumar 's brother Anoop Kumar, who we basically know for the line ' O manu tera toh hua ab mera kya hoga ', used to own lots of Austrian music records. And from these records, Kishore Kumar picked up the art of Yodel singing, an art perfected in bathroom and then introduced by him to the world of Hindi film music. According to his biography 'Kishore Kumar: method in madness‎ ' by Derek Bose, "Kishore was a fan of the Swiss singer Tex Norton [* Tex Morton, an Australian cowboy born in New Zealand who sang  in the gene autry / Jimmie Rodgers style ] and the Australian Jimmy Rogers [* Jimmie Rodgers , perhaps the most American and one of the most famous yodelers in the world, famous for his blue yodels ] as well." Although most of these songs by Kishore Kumar are t