Moong Over Microchips

by Venkat Iyer

  Now, with Moru Dada on the bed, we heard rumours that the sons were squabbling over the huge medical expenses they had to incur.

  One day, after his return from the hospital, I got a call from Nilesh. He said, ‘Baba is not eating or listening to anyone. Can you please come and talk to him?’ Baban and I went to visit him. He had stopped eating completely and was lying on the cot all day and night. He could barely sit up and speak and kept dozing off in the middle of the conversation sometimes. It was a sad situation and we could do nothing about it. I asked him why he had stopped eating the medicines. He smiled and replied, ‘I do not want to be a burden for anyone. Besides the medicines are not helping me.’ Obviously the squabbling had not gone unnoticed by Moru Dada.

  I offered to buy the medicines for him. He said, ‘So you want me to be indebted to you in my next life too?’ He then offered me a raw jackfruit from his tree and said, ‘You Madrasis make a nice bhaji out of this. Go and give it to Meena.’ We made the raw jackfruit bhaji and I took a small portion for Moru Dada. He sat on the bed and ate a bit of it. He said, ‘Now that I have eaten Madrasi food there is nothing left in this life for me.’ I laughed and replied, ‘There are hundreds of dishes you have not tasted. Wait till I bring you all of them.’

  A week later, I got a call in the morning from Baban. Moru Dada had committed suicide. We rushed to his house to find hundreds of people gathered there with women wailing inside the house. We paid our last respects to him. Raajen Singh was also there. He had worked with Moru Dada for the welfare of the tribals. Besides they also had their marriage solemnized on the same day in the village. Raajen and his wife, Archana, were very close to Moru Dada and the family.

  As we walked solemnly to the cremation area near the river we noticed that there was no police. We asked someone why the police had not been called in since it was a case of suicide. We were told it was too much of a headache to have the police called and besides they would insist on a post-mortem, which would delay the funeral. It was better done this way where the case was not reported at all. Anyway the whole village knew he was ill and dying and it made no sense in dragging the authorities into this.

  It took us a while to get over his death. There are so many people who live with diabetes and manage to control it. My mother has been having insulin for over thirty years now and she manages her diabetes very well.

  A couple of months after his death, Sunil met me and gave me a ripe jackfruit from their tree. He said, ‘Baba wanted you to have one. Please take it.’ I saved the seeds of the jackfruit and in the monsoon planted it at the back of the house. The tree is now almost ten feet tall and growing well. It reminds us all of Moru Da the leader and also the good father, husband and friend.

  12

  Snakes, Owls and Other Animals

  The Hissing Cobra

  Staying right at the edge of the village with a river on one side and surrounded by fields and forests was definitely romantic. The romantic setting was also the stage for some unexpected encounters.

  The paddy fields around have a lot of snakes and I have spotted the buff striped keelback, the rat snake, the krait, the deadly Russell’s viper and cobra too. The river and its small islands are full of water snakes. The evenings are a treat as far as moths and insects are concerned. Every inch of the wall, especially near the light source, is covered with varieties of moths. Some of them have the most intriguing designs and I especially try and photograph the bigger ones. I have also spotted a couple of rabbits and a mongoose on the farm during my routine walks. Every once in a while we have scorpions as house guests—they have to be evicted gently.

  I once had the privilege of seeing a buff striped keelback eating a toad during the monsoon. I shot the entire sequence which is a treat to watch even after so many years. Geckos roam the walls and with such an array of tempting bait, they are kept busy. They come in different colours and patterns. The ones we see in the city are a far cry from the beautiful ones at the farm. It is a treat to sit quietly in the evening and watch the geckos prey on unsuspecting insects. Sometimes, I would witness a territorial dispute between two geckos, usually ending with one of them scampering away all bloodied and bruised. A monitor lizard was a resident of the pump room for many years. It was curled up on the wall and it took me a while to figure out what it was, never having seen one before.

  These reptiles and insects did not harm us in any manner and we enjoyed their company. I even had a tree frog on the kitchen shelf for months. The frog had been around for so long that it was almost like a pet and we named it Buzo. It often surprised us by leaping out of coffee mugs. Now we have frogs under the sink, jumping around at night looking for food or on the porch nestling under our slippers or shoes. They are very fond of Pepper’s water basin and treat it like a personal Jacuzzi—floating in it till we evict them. These and the giant wood spiders which spin huge webs across trees are like pets and we look forward to them every season. What we were not prepared for was our surprise visitor.

  It was Independence Day, 15 August 2005. Meena took a couple of days’ leave and came with me to stay at the farm. We reached the farm around afternoon and as usual I started the mandatory check in the house. I looked under the cot, the table and behind the drums. As I entered the kitchen I got this eerie feeling that something was amiss. From the corner of my eye I detected a slight movement on the kitchen shelf.

  I promptly told Meena that there was something in the shelf and asked her not to go near it. As fate would have it, there was no power, so I shone the torch into the shelf. Our guest reared its hood and started hissing. Its hood and markings clearly proclaimed what it was—a beautiful glistening spectacled cobra. We were too shocked to react; we just stood there like statues, with our mouths open. The first thing I thought of was to click pictures. I crept back to the car to get my camera. Every time the flash popped, the snake darted towards us, hissing.

  We had seen cobras on television but this was something that we just could not get over. The hissing itself was sending a chill through our bones and besides it kept darting towards us. Luckily it was on the shelf, high above the ground. A few pictures later the camera batteries gave up. Meena offered to go to the village and get some help. I was not keen as our neighbours were scared of snakes and would be of no help. I had seen their reactions a couple of times when snakes had been spotted. They usually ran a mile from it.

  We could not think straight, and decided that a cup of tea would stir our brains into action. It was an unforgettable experience making tea with a cobra hissing in the background. The shelf with the cups was next to the snake and I had to quickly open the cupboard and take out the cups. The hissing only got more furious. Under the watchful gaze of our guest we made tea and stood in the corner of kitchen sipping and thinking of the next course of action.

  Meena came up with an idea. She suggested that we keep a bucket under the shelf and then push the snake into it. Then it would be an easy task to lift the bucket out of the house—a silly idea from the start. We cleared the vessels and other things lying on the floor of the kitchen. This was to ensure that our guest did not creep behind any of them. Then we got a bucket and pushed it under the shelf.

  I prodded the snake with a long bamboo stick. It hissed more viciously and darted towards me. I lightly kept the stick on its head and suddenly the snake went quiet and put its head down. For a moment I was tempted to catch it but thought the better of it.

  A gentle prod with the stick and I managed to push the snake off the shelf. As fate would have it, it fell outside the bucket. Now there was a slithering, hissing, darting cobra on the floor of the kitchen. I was standing there with a long bamboo trying to push it out of the kitchen door while Meena was outside hoping to shoo it away. The floor was too smooth for the snake and it kept slithering and moving in the wrong direction. All this while it was hissing madly.

  Finally, after a few tries, I managed to push it out of the door. Our guest had no intention of leaving and kept trying to retu
rn to the kitchen. There was no option but to flick it out of the porch. I was reminded of the gilli danda game I had played as a child when I flicked the snake into the field. It had taken us all of forty-five minutes to evict our guest.

  It was a major relief to see the snake slither away into the grass. We both collapsed on the steps and just sat without speaking a word for the next fifteen minutes. Both of us were thinking of the consequence if the snake had bitten one of us. What could we have done? The nearest hospital was at Kasa, 10 kilometres away, and we did not even know if they had the antivenom.

  Later in the evening we sat on the porch and carefully went over the events that had happened a few hours ago. We realized that it was one thing to see an hour of snake show on television and another to be confronted by one at home. We made a check to figure out how it could have entered the house. The errant branch of the mango tree, which we assumed was the way it had got through, was chopped down. We put steel nets on the windows of the house.

  It also dawned on us that it was not the snake that was the intruder but us. We had encroached into their jungle and set up a house. How would the snake know that this was not a place for it to be? We respected the snake and did not harm it. Maybe that was the reason it did not harm us too. When the village came to know of this incident, they insisted we break a coconut under the jamun tree outside the house. If breaking a coconut could prevent cobras from being house guests, I was all for it.

  It was more than two years later that I got the same eerie feeling when I entered the house after a weekend in Mumbai. I knew something was amiss. I did the routine check behind the door and under the table. All seemed clear. Contrary to my usual practice of going to the bedroom and changing I changed into my shorts and T-shirt in the living room itself. A quick check of the kitchen revealed nothing, yet I could not help feeling that something was in the house.

  I opened the back door to let some light in (no power, thanks to MSEB) and went into the bedroom to check. I peered behind the cupboard and looked under the bed only to find nothing. Just as I was about to turn around and go about my chores I sensed a slight movement under the cot. There was definitely something there. I bent down and managed to see a small shiny tail vanish under the swing which had been dismantled and kept under the cot. I went and got our waki or snake stick. A gentle prod to the swing and out popped a shiny, small black head. This was positively a snake.

  The first thought that came to my mind was that it looked very familiar. It reminded me of Michael Phelps the swimmer, minus the ears. Setting aside my Olympic thoughts I focused on the problem at hand. We both stared at each other and before I could be hypnotized I gave a quick knock on the wood.

  It started moving to the other end of the room. I kept staring at it, watching in horror as it slithered across the room. By the time the tail emerged the head had reached the other end of the bedroom. It must have been a good eight feet long. I concluded it was a rat snake (dhaman or aandhla) as it had a shiny, black coat, no hood and a tapering tail. Thankfully these are non-poisonous.

  Slithering (had a quick christening) was now coiled at the far end of the bedroom watching every move I made. I mentally wished it a good day and requested it to move out since it did not belong here. To my surprise it started slithering towards the door. It reached the cupboard and without even a moment’s hesitation turned towards the door. Seconds later it was under the fridge in the kitchen. I could not believe this. I had not even prodded it to do anything. Could it be that I had managed to communicate with it?

  I meekly walked behind it to the kitchen where it was peering at me from the side of the fridge. I realized why it had stopped. There was hardly any space under the door for it to crawl out. I moved slowly to the door and shut it halfway. Thanks to the uneven floor now there was a gap wide enough for Slithering to move out. I almost imagined a slight nod from Slithering as it went out of the door into the field. I hissed a gentle goodbye to it before shutting the door and stuffing cloth into the gap in the door.

  That night I could hardly sleep; I was too excited. Could it be that I had finally managed to communicate with snakes? Why did it go out so meekly? How did it know that it had to go out of the door? It was too complicated to figure out. My thoughts were shattered by a loud thud. I got up thinking, ‘Now what?’

  I stood in the darkness in the kitchen trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. I moved gingerly to the bucket near the shelf which seemed to be the origin of the noise. I shone the torch into the bucket to find a small shrew (chuchundri) trying to jump out. Ah! So this was Slithering’s dinner. I concluded that it had probably come inside chasing the shrew. Anyway, I put a lid on the bucket and went back to sleep. The next morning I let the shrew out in the same direction as Slithering’s exit and mentally informed it about last night’s dinner. I hoped it would have got its meal later.

  One of the most memorable days at the farm was when I spotted the mating dance of two rat snakes. One day, walking along the fence, a faint rustling sound got my attention. I froze and stared intensely into the undergrowth and saw the head of a snake. Within minutes the head reared up and started swaying. To my surprise another head reared up to join the swaying. Both the snakes were dancing to some tune that was playing in their heads. The male kept thrusting upwards while the mate tried to keep pace with the rhythm. At one point they stretched up almost two feet in the air. I stood there as if in a trance watching them move gracefully and in tandem. Saroj Khan, the famous choreographer, could take some lessons from these two. I had no idea how long I stood transfixed watching the dance when a loud thud broke the spell.

  Out in the open the two entwined bodies of the snakes lay a few feet from me, glistening in the bright sun. They were huge snakes and together as one they looked thicker and formidable. With my trance broken, I rushed back to get my mobile and took a couple of pictures. A few more minutes of swaying to the unheard number and the deed was done and they separated. The larger male slithered away while the female just lay there presumably exhausted. After a while it went in the opposite direction.

  I was sure that the next monsoon we would get to see baby rat snakes and I could tell them that I had watched their conception, that is, if I learnt to speak their language by then.

  Another equally amazing event was the spotting of a moth. It did not seem so dramatic till much later when we found out which moth it was. I was pottering around the banana trees when there was a flutter and a huge orange moth flew past me. I chased it to get a better look (no camera). It was real big but I could not identify it. Later I described the moth to Meena who did a check on the Internet. It was none other than the Atlas Moth, the biggest in this part of the world. It is sad that I did not have my camera to capture this sensational creature.

  One thing was certain—our organic ways had brought back a lot of these creatures to the farm. No fertilizers and chemicals meant that they found it conducive to survive in our environment. The hares, the moths, the shrew and Slithering were all back. We are happy to have them back, except maybe the house guests. Some may call us antisocial. So be it.

  The Dreaded Event

  On the fateful day of 14 August 2014, destiny decided to test us. The dreaded event of a snakebite finally happened at the farm.

  Baban and I were cleaning the fence of creepers and sundry other stuff when we decided to take a break for a cup of tea. As we walked back to the house he went to tie his bull to another chikoo tree. Just as I reached the back porch of the house, I heard a painful scream from Baban and the next minute he was running towards the house yelling that something had bitten him. He was sweating profusely. I calmed him down, gave him a glass of water and ran towards the chikoo tree to see what had bitten him. If it was a snake it would be better to identify it. Unfortunately I was too late and the reptile had slithered away in panic like Baban. I walked back gingerly to the house to attend to the victim. A closer look at the wound site with a pair of magnifying lenses and it was clear that the
re were two bite marks on the second toe of his right foot. I measured the distance between the marks and it was around 2.7 millimetres. That surely was a big mouth and had to be a reptile. There was an amber coloured liquid mixed with blood that was oozing out. Luckily the depth of the wound was not much and it looked like the fangs had not sunk into the finger but just grazed it.

  I washed the wound with Dettol and gently squeezed the blood out of the bites. Though we had not seen the snake and had no idea if it was venomous or not, we decided not to take any chances. We left for Kasa hospital which would surely have the antivenom. I informed his family that we were on our way and they could join us at the hospital. There was no point in going to the village since experience had taught me that they would delay the whole plan of going to the hospital.

  By the time we reached the hospital his foot had swollen and the toe was turning into a nice purple colour. The doctor as usual asked if we had seen the snake, which we hadn’t, so he recommended a blood test to check if the anticoagulant had started working. The test came out negative, probably because we had reached there quite fast and the poison had not yet spread.

  Anyway the doctor said Baban would have to be admitted to the hospital and since the snake had not yet been identified, we would have to monitor him and watch out for symptoms of poisoning. I tried to convince him to go ahead and administer the antivenom but he disagreed saying that it was like poison and unless the victim showed other symptoms it might not be a good idea. They started the saline drip and pumped some antibiotics into it. We were asked to monitor him and watch out for symptoms like paralysis, drooping eyelids and bleeding gums or ears and inform the doctor. His family had reached by then with almost half the village in tow. With so many people around, I told them what to look out for and sneaked back to the farm and grabbed my manual on reptiles by J.C. Daniel. After reading about all the snakebites and their symptoms, it looked like it was a Russell’s viper that had snapped at him. After a quick lunch, with Daniel under my armpit for reference, I went back to the hospital.