Snake scare

Last night, after a hectic day in the field, me and Prabhat (my roommate and fellow batch mate) had gone to the nearby Dhaba for a cup of tea… it was around 7in the evening and it was just getting dark…. when I say dark…it’s in the rural context, where its difficult for you to see your own hands at night- no matter how fair you are (not being racist)….

I was on the phone with someone and semi-blind as I am, did not realize that there was this huge crowd of around 15-20 people who had gathered on the highway (I live right on the NH50) till I bumped into one of the local lads… now I am clueless what his name is, though I have played/attempted to play cricket with him several times… seeing me, he started saying something in a very animated manner, in express Marathi, excitement evoking with every syllable…. As usual my abysmal language skills came to haunt me just about then; and I started screaming back “Hindi”..Hindi”, all curious as to why such a large crowd has gathered and wanting to be part of the fun(?)… hearing my anguish and understanding that I want “Hindi”…another guy started screaming “Aajgaar”…”Aajgaar”… while I was trying to be busy figuring out what I need to make out of that, one of the old neighbors in my village started giving me a demo on what he meant…

Trust me, watching Ranchho give demo with Pudine ki chutney is fun…but when your 65-70 year old neighbor “Kaka” tries to do an impromptu striptease, showing off his thighs under his dhoti and explaining that the “aajgaar” was as thick as that looks a bit gross...(“a bit” actually is the understatement of the year); its revolting to say the least… *sighs*

Anyways, enthused by Kaka’s demo, quite a few of the youth in the crowd started giving me demos of the “Aajgar’s” thickness- some showing off his muscles, some his  neck, some his hips….we Indians seem really fond of demos…. Possibly Aamir Khan in 3 Idiots is to be blamed for that…. …problem was, all this while I remained clueless what an Aajgar really was, till I remembered that a python is called “Aajgaar” in Bengali and seemed like even Marathi uses the same word. When I asked them, they confirmed yes it was a snake.

Another strange observation I made was, different people in the crowd seemed to have noticed different portions of the snake’s body. People, all animated and all excited, started discussing on top of their voice the size of the whiskers on the snakes mouth (?), whether it was a baby snake or not, how dark the circular rings on its body were etc etc… I realized that everyone who had appeared in the scene much after I had arrived had a clearer picture of how big the snake was, what it weighted, its color and the length of its whiskers and where it stays….Hmmm… Extremely knowledgeable herpetologist…

By this time, the crowd had thickened and more people had joined in… slowly the picture evolved that a python was found to be slithering on the National Highway, when a truck driver spotting the snake (which is known for its slow movement), caught the snake and threw it into the ditch beside the Highway to ensure that cars don’t run over it.  The crowd was trying to find the snake from the ditch…

On hearing this, my first reaction was excitement- I will finally get to see a python alive and in the wild…the second immediate thought was- are these people gathered to kill it? I started inquiring “why are they trying to find it?”… someone told me coz they want to save it and hand it over to forest Dept…. Can you believe the relief?

Python is one of the endangered species of snakes in India… and the only ones I have ever seen are in captivity. Somehow when I realized that the villagers were trying to protect the snake, it felt really awesome…here every day we see these people barred within the boundaries of caste, creed and what not other nonsense…and now the same villagers from all sections and age were trying to unite together to save a snake which they hadn’t even seen…

Search Lights, mobile torches, even Bike Head lights joined the attempt to find the snake. But, after 45-50mins of searching in the darkness, many a failed sightings and people scaring each other off deliberately, we returned home with no luck of capturing and saving the wild python.

However, more importantly, I learned an important lesson about human behavior that night…people might struggle to co-exist, but if they find a cause, they usually stand united…even if the cause may bring peril to them, like finding a snake which is known to be one of the most dangerous ones around…

PS: this is a true incident, this post is as true as it can be and i haven't dramatized anything, the site where this happened is >20 feet from my room..