Senan pondered how to tell Pakirappa about his nightmare of a small black cobra. Pakirappa would associate it with some ill-omen. If Senan told him that poison was spat on his face, Pakirappa would misconstrue it as the inescapable curse of Naga. So, Senan remained silent.
'What were you doing inside? I yelled for long,' Pakirappa said.
Senan replied, taking the last sip of tea, 'I was engaged in the Sun salutation. Unlike you, just gazing and praying.'
'He still observes it!' Pakirappa said to himself, and he giggled.
Senan developed the habit of Sun Salutation from Pakirappa. During the Sun Salutation, Pakirappa would consider the Sun as the Almighty. After long hours of hard work under the Sun, the Sun will turn into a good-for-nothing human for him.
In the early morning, he would enter the puddle near the waterfall and immerse himself completely in the water two or three times. Standing facing the rising sun, he would take some water in his palms. Then, looking into it, he would worship and offer it to the Sun God. Meanwhile, he would murmur some prayer or mantra, which Senan never heard.
After this, for the whole day, he would curse the Sun for the unbearable heat or weak sunshine, and for being untimely while rising and setting.
When Senan mentioned it, he grinned showing his upper canine double teeth. He admitted that working hard without unleashing his frustration on someone would be a terrible experience for him.
'Did you go to puddle today?'
'No, I didn't. All the while, I tapped anxiously and scared. The escaped cobra had seen me with you. I thought it'd appear at any time from the darkness to take revenge on me.'
'That's impossible,' Senan rejected the idea of being attacked by the escaped cobra, and he added, 'As far as I know, only elephants have so much memory to be revengeful.'
'We believe so,' Pakirappa affirmed.
For hours, Pakirappa's gaze had been fixed on the top of the mountain, as if he had lost the sense of his surroundings.
'I sometimes wonder if, far beyond these forests and hills, there is a village where I lived and where my family still lives. Sometimes, I want to reach its peak and tumble over to its foot on the other side.'
Senan looked far at those twin hills with a peculiar imaginary neck. From their neck to their head, they had the color of soil. No trees were growing there.
'That's Lord Shiva and Parvathi,' Pakirappa asserted.
Looking at it, Senan also felt the same. Amidst this, Senan looked up at the clear sky. From the farmhouse, the sky seems closer to him, like a high ceiling.
'Yesterday, I had a strange vision in the sky,' Senan said.
'That Cobra?' turning towards him, Pakirappa asked agitatedly.
'No, I saw Neenkaraja.'
'Where?' Pakirappa was startled at this.
'In the sky, among the clouds,' Senan replied confidently. Although it sounded rubbish, it was apt enough to terrify Pakirappa. He sprang up from his haunches and reached Senan like lightning.
'How could you recognize him? You've never met him!' Pakirappa asked.
'It was him,' Senan asserted, and to convince Pakirappa, he explained how he found Neenkaraja among the clouds. During his narration, Pakirappa looked around mysteriously and gagged Senan's mouth to hide something.
'Stop it!' he shouted, his eyes were wide with fear, and added, 'Don't say this to anyone. He was missed. He can't be found anywhere. He can't be dead. He is missed, that's all. Nothing else could've happened to him. Did you get me?'
Since Senan got into something mysterious, he had to agree to it, and he did.
(to be continued)
YOU ARE READING
Invincible Naga
Mystery / ThrillerSenan had strange encounters with snakes, both in dreams and real life, when he was employed as a laborer in a vast farmland in the deep woods in a remote village in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, South India. Later, he finds that the snake had bee...
