Snakes alive!

I came across Jose while searching for a story. It was a desperate hour. Saturday evening and I had to find a city story for Sunday. I call...

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I came across Jose while searching for a story. It was a desperate hour. Saturday evening and I had to find a city story for Sunday. I called up everyone I knew. Finally it was Jose who told me something interesting. He said he had been on a snake catching spree in a place called Dwarka, a new housing area in west Delhi. He said yesterday he had found a cobra in a home there and today there was another SOS call from the same house: two more!

Jose’s NGO alone had already caught 30 snakes in Dwarka this monsoon. He sounded excited but there was some anguish in his tone. He could not explain from where these snakes were emerging but, as an animal lover, the thought that the cobras had been reduced to such abject homelessness saddened him. His assistant/driver at the wildlife NGO for which he worked was once a snake charmer who made a living catching snakes in the wilderness that was once Dwarka, now a real estate investor’s dream destination.

It was 10 pm when he told me of the three cobras being found in the same house. He was already clambering into the car driven by his snake charmer assistant. While it was the apartment dwellers who had called him, for Jose the mission was equally to save the reptiles.

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Dwarka used to be a jungle. The trees were cut and farming began. The place was full of all kinds of wildlife, a snake charmer’s haven. Till of course Jose’s NGO caught the snake charmer in the act. Instead of getting him arrested, the NGO decided to employ him to rescue animals in distress.

Dwarka’s story continued on Sunday. In the morning Jose told me with alarm that a five-year-old child has been bitten by a cobra in the same housing society. The parents wanted the cobra killed. Jose appeared in such agony over this request that I almost forgot to ask him about the condition of the girl. The house where the cobra bit the girl was near the home where the three cobras had surfaced the previous two days. The question Jose asked is: Who is the trespasser? Snake or man?

My story went for a toss. I had failed to organise the pictures. But come Monday and I cannot resist calling Jose. Jose are you busy, I ask. He said he was in searching for a snake. Where? In Dwarka? No in a place called Chattarpur. Call me later, he told me cheerily. He’s cheerful, perhaps, at the thought that every snake he removes helps save not just people, but also the snakes from being beaten to death.