Last Saturday afternoon, I was out in the backyard of our home at Kerala, checking out
what you could call a mini banana-plantation, which is standing testimony to the hard work
put in by my parents. Some 50-odd plants thrive there, with many of them coming from
varied places, including as far as Karaikkal, which is a small town some 750-kms from our
home and where my Dad was stationed when he retired from service.
We have never had to buy plantains for quite some time now, given that at any time,
there would be atleast a tree ready to be harvested. The soil is fertile and with the right
combo of sunlight, water and attention, it can work wonders. Water is never a problem
in kerala given the copious monsoons we are blessed with. The downside to too much rains
is that just a week after you have cleared all grass and weeds from the land, it gets a fresh
cover of green, which while giving a good natural look, has its own problems as I learnt.
I am standing there, surveying the greenery all around and wondering what can be done
to remove all those grass and weeds. From experience, I know that if a snake (we have
lots of them in Kerala) is there amid the grass, it won't be visible and stepping on it by
mistake could be dangerous.
Lost in these thoughts, I hear a twig move behind me and instinctively turn around.
At first, I can't see anything. But then I see a brown snake wriggle away, just 2 feet
from my legs. Luckily it chose to go in the opposite direction and not towards me,
because I am not sure what I would have been able to do if it came to me. I did not
have even a stick with me for defence or offense.
I see it wriggle away, some 1 metre in length, around 2 inches round. Can see the head,
but since I am not one of those guys on AnimalPlanet/NatGeo/Discovery channels, I can't
place the snake as harmless or dangerous. I think I saw a slight indication of a hood, which
is usually a mark of the Cobra, one of the most venomous snakes. But a Cobra has never
been sighted in our neighborhood.
As a kid, I have come across many snakes and almost always managed to kill them too.
One of my uncles used to have a roof-tile business many years ago. He used to stay across
the river and since there was no bridge across the river in those days, he used our yard to
stock the tiles, which would lie untouched for days, till a buyer came to get some.
And by that time, snakes would have made the pile of tiles a home and come out when the
tiles were removed. My Grandpa used to have a cane stick just for these times and I have
lost count of the number of snakes I killed. But then people shifted to using concrete for the
roofs and tiles were no longer popular and he shut shop.
Since then, we had not been seeing many snakes. Ofcourse, there still used to be the odd
rat-snake (called Chera in Malayalam), which is mostly harmless and which we would sight occasionally. But then no one kills a Chera and it just goes about its job of keeping the rat population in check.
Anyway, I have goose-berries just seeing the snake and thinking that I had walked past
that same spot and wondering how come I did not step on it. By this time, I see the snake
slide into a heap of coconut tree leaves lying on the ground. I follow cautiously and can see
it. I get a stick and poke the heap of leaves, which makes it leave that cozy place and get
into the water-logged field adjoining our land. I see it swimming away, but still can't make
out what snake it is.
Get back home and tell my parents so that they can be careful working there. They spend
quite some time every day there tending to the banana plants and the small kitchen-garden
they have there. They are like, "It must have been a Chera". But this was brown, and not yellowish like how a Chera looks.
"Then it must be a Polagan (water snake - really harmless)", says my Dad. "Especially
because it took to water. The real snakes don't really take to water much".
Hmm. A Polagan is dismissed very casually in Kerala as something that does not merit any
attention. And if I ended up getting a scare due to a polagan, that doesn't really say much
about my courage. :-(
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