Snakebite

She tumbles down to the canal. Rolling over and over on the hard riverbank, towards the cool brown water rushing
by. Sky and land flip places in a crazy kaleidescope picture.
With a bump, she hits the side of the canal. She sits up, a little dizzy, laughing to herself. The sky is a bright jewel
overhead, a few eagles circling lazily in the soft cotton blue. She rubs her head, scratches at a bump underneath
her hair.

Pulling her clothes straight, she drops to all fours and crawls along the edge of the canal. She has heard the other
children talk about a large cobra that lives in a hole on the canal bank. She has slipped away from her mother who
is working in the field, running down to the canal to try and find the cobra. The children talk about it in hushed
voices. 'It's as big as I am,' says one boy. 'It's bigger,' says another. 'It's as big as my father's leg,' says a third.

The girl has listened to all these tales and now wants to see it for herself. But she cannot tell anyone this is what
she wants to do. They will try to stop her. Her father will beat her. Her mother will scold. 'Are you mad, trying to
find a cobra? What will you do, bring it home to sleep with us?'
She does not want to keep it, but she wants to see it. She has seen snakes before, while walking along the dusty
roads that cut through the land. They are shimmering, curving dark lines that slip across the road and in between
the stalks of wheat in the fields below. Seeing a snake has always created a mixture of fear and amazement in her.
She wants to see if that magic will happen again when she and the cobra meet each other alone.

She stops now, at a small hole. She watches it carefully. Does the cobra live down here? She looks around for a
stick, breaks a branch off a nearby tree. Carefully, she slides the stick into the dark hole. Nothing happens. She
withdraws the stick, moving further along the canal.

She tries a few more holes, but she does not find any cobras. In one hole, a small, furry creature comes half-way
out, chattering furiously at her. It looks like a mongoose. Perhaps the mongoose has killed the cobra that lives in
here, and has taken over its home, she thinks.

She stands up, dusts off her clothes, and throws the stick to the ground. Climbing up the hill to the road, she begins
to walk home.

As she trudges towards her hut, a large jeep pulls up alongside her. She draws her veil protectively around her
mouth. The jeep's window rolls down, and a girl inside, a little bit older than she is, says to her in Sindhi, 'What's
your name?'

She doesn't answer, just stares. She is suddenly tongue-tied.

The front window opens, and the man sitting in the driver's seat says, 'What's your name, girl?'

She replies boldly, finding her voice, 'Why should I tell you?'

The people in the car ask her again and again, but she refuses to tell them her name. They close their windows and
drive away, leaving a great cloud of dust behind to choke her. She throws a few pebbles at the car, but they don't
notice.

'Where did you go today?' asks her mother, as they eat their evening meal. She is helping her mother, bringing large
chappatis to the table, pouring buttermilk into tin cups for her father and brothers.

'I was walking...' she begins. Then she stops, fearing a rebuke.

'Where were you walking?' says her father. His face is lined, tired; he toils from sunrise to sunset in the sugarcane
field, cutting the cane. Her mother works in the field as well, plucking white cotton bolls until her fingers are sore.
The girl helps in the field too, running from plant to plant, picking out boll weevils with her fingers, throwing them
into a bag which will be burned later. She doesn't like to see the weevils being burned. Sometimes they crawl out of
their bag, small squirming patches of fire and flesh.

'I was just...walking,' she says.

'Did you go to the canal?' His voice is stern.

She cannot lie. 'Yes, Baba,' she says in a meek voice.

'I've told you not to wander there!' he says. 'It's dangerous for a young girl like you. Bad things can happen.'

'Yes, Baba,' she answers. She knows better than to argue with her father.
Her father grunts, finishes his meal, gets up from the table. She picks up the dishes and glasses, and takes them
outside to wash under the pump. Her cheeks still feel hot from the embarrassment of being found out, but she
knows that she still wants to go back and find the cobra.

The next day, she disappears again. She runs through the field when her mother is not looking her way, and climbs
out from between the tall stalks of sugarcane out to the other side. She knows the fields and roads by heart; she
grew up playing on these lands.
She walks down to the canal, singing a little song to herself. She twirls her skirts, dipping her head, her voice
warbling in a high-pitched key. When she reaches the canal bank, she crosses slowly down, bending her legs to
keep her balance.

The canal is flowing strong today. Branches of wood float by, twisting and turning in the muddy brown water. She
throws a twig into the current and watches it drift away.
She walks along the bank, her head bowed, looking for the cobra's hole. She doesn't see any holes for quite a long
way. She walks and walks, hoping that she will find the elusive snake.
Suddenly, she stumbles, and there, in the earth, is a small dark indentation, narrow and dusty. She drops to her
haunches, squatting next to the hole. She takes the stick in her hand and pokes exploratively, once, twice.

From the hole, a large hissing sound escapes, and she shrieks, jumping back. She watches in terror as a large black
snake emerges. It slides out, sinewy long, and winds itself up into a tight black coil. It regards her with two black
eyes, cold and glittering.
She draws a sharp breath. It is the cobra, larger than she had imagined. She watches it warily. It moves in a circle,
and it raises its head, forming a flattened hood with the upper part of its neck and head.
Its tongue, narrow and forked, darts out. It wavers for a few minutes, hissing. It turns its head from side to side in
sharp, watchful movements.
She shrieks again, and pushes herself up, running away as fast as her short legs will take her.

She dreams day and night about the cobra. How it looked, the way it slithered out of its den, and rose up on its tail
to watch her. She shivers to herself excitedly as she thinks about the way its slitted eyes, its cold black skin, the sun
glistening on its dry scales. She wishes she had seen its fangs.
For the next several days, she cannot escape the watchful eye of her parents; they fear that she will sprint away in
search of the cobra. They find chores for her to do, keeping her occupied every minute of the day. It is a busy time
on the lands; the cane is being harvested and every man works throughout the day. The women work side-by-side
with the men; the children run back and forth between the fields, fetching water, food, cloth for their parents to
wipe their brows with.

Finally, after three days, she finds an opportunity in the lazy hours of the afternoon to escape. Her mother is away,
assisting her aunt in delivering a baby; her father has travelled on a large truck to the next farm with a load of cane
to see it being weighed before dispatching it to the mill for crushing.
She looks to the left and right, and then dashes out from the field, down the familiar path towards the canal bank.
She skips along the road, looking for the eucalyptus tree with two trunks, which tells her that the cobra's lair is
close by. When she finds the tree, she slides down the embankment to the canal's edge. The water swirls lazily,
reflecting blue the color of the sky. It is clear and clean, without the debris and flotsam that usually dots its surface.

A whirpoorwill lets loose its throaty chuckle. In the distance she can hear the plaintive cry of a peacock. There is a
jungle, where the children say ghosts live, as a holy man is buried in the middle of the wood. Perhaps one day she
will go see his grave.

She is concentrating on the hole in the ground, looking for a stick to break off the tree and push into the hole. She
wants to see if she can coax the cobra to come out of its hiding place. She snaps a thin branch off with her hands
and kneels on the ground, poking at the hole. Her muscles are tense; she is ready to leap back at the first sight of
the cobra.

The hiss begins again, and as she watches the black body slowly seep out of the ground, she is suddenly aware of
something new. On the road, a jeep is pulling to a stop above. Two men emerge from it, and start to climb down to
her on the edge of the canal.

She keeps one eye on the hole, and one on the men who are approaching her. Out of the corner of her eye she can
see the cobra begin to arrange itself in its attacking rounds; its head rises and it sends a warning ss-ss-ss to her
ears.

The men stop a few feet away from her. She wants to draw her dupatta over her head but she is holding the stick
in both hands.

One of the men says to her, 'So, girl, tell us your name now.'

She says nothing.

He says, 'Come on, don't you want to be friendly with us?'

She begins to tremble, the sweat trickling down her back. These men do not look friendly; they look dangerous.
One has a beard, the other a pair of fierce mustaches. She says in a whisper, 'What do you want?'

'We just want to talk to you,' replies the first man.

The other one stays silent, watching her, his eyes narrowing in his face. They begin to approach her again, slowly,
cautiously, as if she is a wild animal that might dart away. She remains frozen, afraid of their intention, trapped
between them and the river behind her.

Then the man sees that the cobra is winding steadily on the ground near the girl's feet. He mutters something to his
companion, who shouts out, 'Look! It's going to bite you. You will die. Come with us, we'll protect you.'

She drags her eyes from their faces to the snake, risen from the ground, its hood shining faintly in the bright sun.
She feels dizzy. She wants to fall, to jump into the water, but she cannot swim, and they will block her path if she
tries to run.

The men's faces are close, then far away. Their voices seem to be coming at her from a distance. She knows that
they are the 'bad thing' that her father had warned her about.
She swallows, her head pounding. Then she looks at the snake, suspended in the air. Its eyes are wider and darker
than anything she has ever seen, offering her everything and nothing all at once.

The men gesture to her frantically. One draws a large sweating hand across his forehead. The other reaches out
for her, as if to pull her with them back into the jeep.
In one swift motion, she drops to her knees, thrusts her hand out to the snake, and waits for its bite to take her
away to safety.