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Journalism of Courage
Foreign friends always wonder at how we could possibly revere reptiles. I guess it8217;s to do with the mythology you inherit. To many people on the planet the snake is not really an avatar of Shaitan, as in the serpent of Eden. As D.H. Lawrence puts it in his poem, The Snake: 8220;The voice of my education said to me/He must be killed8230;But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet..8221; But, conditioned to be most afraid, he throws a log at the snake, which convulses and vanishes. 8220;And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself.8221;
Out in Korea, the Buddhist poet So Chong-Ju pen-name, 8216;Midang8217; who was influenced by Baudelaire and Nietzsche, wrote Flower-Snake Poems 1941 that expressed the same ambivalence: 8220;A back road pungent with musk and mint/So beautiful, that snake/What huge griefs brought it birth? Such a repulsive body!8221;
Meanwhile, modern Indian voices seem to show no fear, but only reverence. You can hear the praise from old Natya Sangeet songs like Nagasayana Narayana to a score of films about nagins, ichha-dhari saap and wicked jogis always called Bhairon Nath, in bizarre parody of poor Shivji. So I tell my foreign friends: 8220;Snakes are part of our package, in our land and in our heads8221;. And when we pass Nag Devta8217;s shrine, you bet I bob a namaste! It8217;s one more way to tryst with the Compassionate Lord and remind ourselves that despite God8217;s inordinate fondness for creepy things, perhaps His oddest creation is us.
