They stopped talking and got into the river slowly, holding each other's hands. They placed their feet on the slithery stones immersed in the river. The flow was not so heavy there. Even then, Senan looked above for the heavy vines dangling from the trees on the banks that stood leaning to the river. None of them were at a hand's length. However, they crossed the river and got onto its other bank. Still, they could hear the whistles intermittently, and Pakirappa answered them in the same pitch.
Pakirappa hurried in front, along a thin path through wild plants taller than him, safely guiding Senan after him with shouts and calls. A few times, their feet got caught in different wild creepers with iron vines that lay as numerous serpents entwined.
Tripping over lentil vines and scraping their wrists against the sharp blades of lemongrass, they hurried towards the house. It was explicit that Pakirappa had once wisely used it, leaving it back later as unwanted or forgotten for the wild plants to breed.
'We're taking a shortcut. The other path is long and full of lemongrass. But it doesn't go across the river.' Pakirappa said, and Senan hummed to it.
While getting to the house, Senan was startled that the image of the house in his mind had no resemblance to the real one. Its wall of red mud has the double thickness of usual walls. He had perceived only its triangular, tiled roof caught amidst the bushy heads of the wild trees from afar.
While getting a furlong far from the front of the house, they could see some laborers from the KG estate had appeared there as mere spectators.
'See them keep watching, doing nothing,' Senan commented dejectedly.
'None would dare approach it. It's gigantic,' Pakirappa said to them.
'Then me?' Senan expressed his doubt and stared at Pakirappa, stopping for a while.
'Unlike us, they've got no rifle,' Pakirappa explained.
Meanwhile, they could see the house. Far beyond its fence, a small group of laborers were crowded below a big tree with a vast bed of dry, fallen leaves beneath it. Seeing Pakirappa, they exchanged a few gestures with him. Someone among them showed that the python had been in the front yard, from where they could see it.
The Bengali laborer, watching over the python from a distance at the front fence of the house, gestured for them to pace carefully so that the python lying in the front yard would not be aware of their approach. So, they did.
As they approached the fence to the right of the home, they met a frail, bald graybeard with a dhoti around his waist and a hand towel over his shoulder. He showed them how to go over the fence and into the courtyard. Pakirappa approached Senan and said, 'He has been making the cries and howls.' The man appeared too weak to make any sound. Nonetheless, his loud shrieks and howls could reach long distances. His cicadas-like sound pierced their ears and made them gape at him in awe.
Breaking the fence made of twigs and branches, they stepped over it. As Pakirappa reminded Senan to pace light steps slowly, they walked without letting the earth know about it. Pakirappa had warned Senan that the ground informs the snakes of the approaching paces.
They entered the house through the back door. Holding their breath, Senan and Pakirappa stood partially hidden behind the half-opened front door of the house. They could see the python lying in the front yard, as though guarding the house, and often looking at the residents, slightly raising its head.
'The boy was playing in the courtyard. He heard the rustling of fallen leaves and saw a large python crawling toward the house.' A woman from among the thronged residents in the house murmured.
Hearing it, an old man, possibly the grandfather of the boy, sitting on an age-old, worn-out wooden cot, added, 'Hearing the cry of the child, the whole house was in chaos.'
Pakirappa nodded, looking at him. They moved ahead to the open sit-out with bated breath, afraid of an attack from the dangerous constrictor at any time.
Although they got to the sit-out quietly, the snake raised and moved its head as if listening to something approaching. Its size took Senan aback. It was beyond his imagination. Noe would dare to shoot it. Beckoning Senan to stop, Pakirappa folded his hands and stood, looking at the snake with devotion.
The snake raised its head a little, looked at them again, and hissed.
'Stop it!' Senan murmured to Pakirappa.
'Let's try it first. If it withdrew, it'd be better,' Pakirappa replied.
'It won't. Let me shoot it.' Senan aimed and closed his right eye to get the finest aim. By that time, it had looked at Senan for a while. Senan was aiming the barrel of his rifle at it. Unexpectedly, it turned back and began to recede rapidly.
Seeing the snake approaching at high speed, the spectators beyond the fence watching over it cried out and ran for their lives, and the people hidden inside the house all rushed to the sit-out, creating a high volume of pandemonium enough to frighten the python.
'Enough, enough. Do nothing, Chenna; leave it.' Pakirappa, who had brought Senan to kill the snake, stopped him and begged, 'No, don't shoot. There's something wrong.'
'What's wrong?'
'See, it's running away, seeing you. Take your hands off the trigger.'
'It's afraid of bullets,' Senan said, trying to hold the rifle to himself.
'Don't be foolish! It's not the case, but something else,' Pakirappa murmured, seizing Senan's rifle.
'I doubt something else, something beyond our knowledge,' the feeble bald graybeard whispered from their back as though he could read their mind.
(to be continued)
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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...
