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Content Tip
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Children's
Story Writing is a good creative outlet and can be used
to inspire others.
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Cobra Village
Original
name of the village was Sunder Gaon or the beautiful village
on account of its situation where it was set in a countryside surrounded
by a pretty panorama of land and hills. Its population consists
of about six thousands souls and their mainstay is farming and when
the monsoon season arrives, the wetness takes over every nook and
corner of the landscape. It is a time for planting rice, which is
the staple food of the inhabitants.
The greenery then takes over with miles and miles of paddy fields
covering the long stretches of countryside with men and women in
muddy fields planting the stalks of the crop. Some transplant the
seedlings with a definite plan when the insert is pushed up to three
centimeters into the soil and the rows at definite distance. The
others do the transplants at random distances. Most plant it during
rainy season as it increases the surrounding vegetation for mutual
shading of the growing plants.
While wading through the deep mud, some people come across other
small creatures, usually the crawling ones like worms or other creatures
like snakes that are usually trying to find a higher ground for
dry spots of uplands of the village from the flooded lowlands. The
planters are bound to step on these creatures unknowingly and during
the years there has been fatalities from snakebites but not many
as majority of theses creatures are of non-poisonous type but when
bitten a person is jolted into a shock and panic whatever type the
snake may be. There is a hospital few miles away which keep the
antidote serum and one is lucky to reach it, when the fatality can
be cured.
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Some years back
the crops began to fail either due to lack of seasonal rains
or decrease of yield from the paddy fields and most people
could not account for that sudden change. There has been droughts
before but were offset with adequate monsoon the following
years but it was difficult to pinpoint the reduction in yields
from the harvests so regularly. The priest performed some
rituals for enhanced yields but without much success. They
consulted other specialist in the farming industry but no
one could explain the reason for it. Villagers put extra labours
and hard work into their fields and then left the whole thing
in the wills of gods as they have done whatever they could
do.
Then the rains came with a vengeance and it rained perpetually
for four days without any stop. All the land around the village
was flooded and so were the low-lying surroundings villages.
It did not do much damage to Sunder Gaon due to its elevated
position in the district.
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The villagers
observed that besides people coming from the adjacent districts
to take shelter on the higher grounds of their village, there
were other creatures too, doing the same thing. There were
snakes too seeking shelter in the village by swimming through
the floodwaters.
On the first
day of such happenings, people sighted about half a dozen
of these creatures but soon their numbers began to increase
to the dread of the villagers who tried to lock themselves
behind their doors and watched the panorama through the windows
or through chinks of their wooden doors. The strange thing
that they noticed was that the army of snakes kept themselves
to a piece of a plot outside the village and did not move
into the vicinity of village where most people were inhabiting.
In order to discuss any further action they decided to have
a meeting in the village temple. They discussed all the options
opened to them. Firstly to leave the snakes alone but there
were many flaws with this proposition. Suppose their numbers
even increased to some enormous proportion? They would take
over the village and then the villagers had to leave their
land and this was impossible to envisage. They could not leave
the village as they depended on their lands and farms to make
a living and they could not simply be driven out by those
lowly creatures. They had to take a firmer action and a united
stand, they had to either kill them or drive them back to
the territories where they had come from.
Before mapping out their strategy they observed the creatures
from a safe distance. There were creatures of all sizes and
colours. The majority were the king cobras but others were
there including rat snakes who lived mostly on catching the
rats of which there were plenty in the village and the fields.
They would be useful in protecting their crops from the vermin.
There were so many other varieties and they called a snake
expert to identify those. The expert identified numerious
varieties both poisnous and non- poisnous. He explained that
most of these were king cobras. Most of these are near sighted
creatures and are all colour blind and do not have eye lids
to cover their eyes. They can smell pretty well by their sensitive
tongues but not much by their nostrils. The tongue normally
picks up the odour molecules. There were few pythons and pit
vipers too and these have sensing pits, which can help them
to detect and catch t warm-blooded animals like rodents and
birds even in complete darkness
Dog-faced water snakes could catch and swallow fish and other
marine creatures. When they come on the land, their movements
were rapid and so sometime are called 'side winders.' People
were anxious to know how the venomous snake kill their victims
and the expert explained that their venom is not composed
of a single substance but was toxic saliva made up of a mixture
of chemical enzymes. Their victims attacked in two ways Through
blood toxin, which attacks the blood circulatory system damaging
muscle tissues and causing excessive scarring and gangrene,
which may result in amputation of a limb.
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The poison attacked
the central nervous system too resulting in heart failure,
breathing difficulties and eventually to respiratory paralysis.
The death then occurred due to collapse of the whole bodily
system. At this time, the chief priest intervened and put
forward reasons for not killing the creatures. He directed
the audience to ancient mythological scriptures where the
serpent has been a symbol of the flow of energy in human body
as in kundilini yoga where the serpent power lies coiled at
the lowest charka or energy center of the body and when it
is awakened and made to travel upwards through earth, water,
heat, air and space charka and when comes to eye center where
yogi can control its flow to master the lower charka and becomes
controller of all the material reality and further when this
female force Paravati meets its consort Shiva residing in
brain charka, a yogi can tastes enlightenment.
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Furthermore ancient
Indian sculpture depicted union of Naga and Nagini as a significant
metaphysical force of universe as in the creative union of male
and female forces. Further example of such visual arts being Lord
Vishnu riding in a snake vehicle and seven hooded cobra protecting
Jina in his meditation. During the festival of Nag Panchmi the snakes
are revered -cobras are trapped, worshipped, fed with rats and then
set free. Due to its intrinsic power the snake is both revered and
reviled. Krishna has to battle with a king snake to subdue its power
and sometime is depicted in a blue coloured body as a result of
snake poison.
The people heeded
the pleas of the priest and asked him how they could win the co-operation
of the snakes for their benefits as otherwise they have to get rid
of all those creeping creatures. The priest thought about it but
stated he could not give an answer straight away and the matter
needs to be thought over and he would have a plan ready in two days
time. The people agreed as most of them were inclined, to abhorrence
of killing any living creatures however revile they might have looked
in appearance. They gathered in village hall again to listen to
the priest again. He needed to perform a ritualistic ceremony to
charm the snakes, as not to bite people or use their venom against
any of the village inhabitant. Recitation of simple mantras would
not do, he had to organize some dramatic and theatrical performance.
In the meantime people saw that the snakes were getting lethargic
and there was a lack of movements among them and people
concluded that the creatures were getting weaker on account of lack
of food and the women of the village took jugs of milk and earthen
pots near that place in order to save them. They poured milk into
those pots and waited further whether anything happened. To the
amazement of people the snakes began to move towards it attracted
by the prospects of food and sensing the milk due through their
acute sense of smell and people were happy that they done a good
deed by dint of saving a few snake which otherwise might have died
due to hunger. Children were especially entertained by that strange
spectacle and imitated their crawling movements in the village streets
to the amusements of the adults.
The priest recruited some dancing girls and separas or the snake
charmers for the performance and scheduled it for certain day. The
villagers began to tempt the snakes by placing the food in and around
the temple and they succeeded so and when any snake strayed into
the people's home, they chased it to the temple by show of raised
sticks and other threatening gestures. In that way the snakes began
to be trained by spoken words and gestures just like a dog gets
trained by its owner.
The performance took place one afternoon in the temple. The dancing
girls were dressed like snakes in their stripped costumes, as snake
goddesses, with hoods on their heads and when people thronged to
the hall and sat there the snakes were invited too by putting saucers
of milk around the stage. Few guards stood with their sticks ready
in case of any mishap and then the show began. The separas came
with their beens or musical pipes made of dried bottle gourd plant
and started an orchestra of their especially composed tunes. They
were dressed in saffron robes and made an impressive scene. The
dancing girls began to dance first in slow movements putting a spell
on the snakes and with the snake charmers movements and music; the
creatures were impressed and came under a sort of spell. The cobras
stood with their hoods erect and danced to the music too, swaying
with the movements. The people in the hall were spell bound too,
with the misty evening sunrays filtering through the windows. That
impressive show lasted for sometime.
*
Things changed for the better in the village and that year there
was an abundant yield from the v crops and since than every year
in and out, it has not diminished and people are becoming prosperious
and most of them attribute it to the presence of snakes amidst them.
More snakes have come to stay and now there are nearly three thousand
of them or one snake for two of the inhabitants. The creatures have
learnt to keep away at arms length from people. In the morning they
go to houses for their daily breakfast and are fed by the woman
folk. Most people have become used to their sight and are not alarmed
accept the strangers or the travelers to the village.
Recently the village was accorded with a certificate for preserving
the wild life of the district and also got mentioned in all
the prestigious publications. Durlabh
Singh© 2008.
Contributing
Story Teller Durlab Singh
durlabhsingh@hotmail.com
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