The whitewashed
walls sparkled in the late evening sun, kitchen exhaust fans announced dinners
in progress and the shrill voices of young cricketers echoed through the
tenement.
They did not always infest the corridors, but ran for cover when their feet disturbed the careful rangoli at that Srinivas’s fearsome mother’s doorstep, or when their flailing arms brought down clothes drying on Upstairs-auntie’s line and she threw her dough covered rolling pin at them, or worse when the ball bounced loudly off Sathya-auntie’s plexiglass front door and she told their parents she had caught them using her progressively browning wall as wickets.
This evening they had abandoned their game and were gathered in a circle on the bald summer parched playground next to the garbage dump.
As the sun set behind the water-tank, the boys and their cricket bats cast pitchfork shadows on Watchman uncle’s gray uniform. They watched with awe and morbid fascination, a mist of red sand rising in their faces, as it danced under Watchman uncle’s dog-beating stick.
It was a cobra, a king cobra, even, Shashank said, and Murali reported that it had apparently hided in the D-complex staircase mailbox and attacked Sneha-aunty when she was taking out her mails. One of RJ’s older brothers whispered that she had died off and that everyone was keeping quiet about it and that if any of them blabbed about it a cobra would jump out from under their bed at night and kill them off too. My brother grew sickened at the beating and left before the very very poisonous venom in the carcass reportedly turned the fire purple and green.
I and my sister and Shanthi and her annoying younger sister, who always played with us even when we didn’t want her to but couldn’t say anything because we liked Shanthi, were high up in Rani-paati’s gooseberry tree pocketing handfuls of her not-yet-ripe berries. Killing swollen mosquitoes against each other’s legs and careful to stay just out of sight of paati’s bathroom window, we watched the spectacle from a distance. As the street lamps flickered noisily on, we momentarily forgot to keep a sharp eye and ear out for her to hope that the snake was fully dead before it burned.
They did not always infest the corridors, but ran for cover when their feet disturbed the careful rangoli at that Srinivas’s fearsome mother’s doorstep, or when their flailing arms brought down clothes drying on Upstairs-auntie’s line and she threw her dough covered rolling pin at them, or worse when the ball bounced loudly off Sathya-auntie’s plexiglass front door and she told their parents she had caught them using her progressively browning wall as wickets.
This evening they had abandoned their game and were gathered in a circle on the bald summer parched playground next to the garbage dump.
As the sun set behind the water-tank, the boys and their cricket bats cast pitchfork shadows on Watchman uncle’s gray uniform. They watched with awe and morbid fascination, a mist of red sand rising in their faces, as it danced under Watchman uncle’s dog-beating stick.
It was a cobra, a king cobra, even, Shashank said, and Murali reported that it had apparently hided in the D-complex staircase mailbox and attacked Sneha-aunty when she was taking out her mails. One of RJ’s older brothers whispered that she had died off and that everyone was keeping quiet about it and that if any of them blabbed about it a cobra would jump out from under their bed at night and kill them off too. My brother grew sickened at the beating and left before the very very poisonous venom in the carcass reportedly turned the fire purple and green.
I and my sister and Shanthi and her annoying younger sister, who always played with us even when we didn’t want her to but couldn’t say anything because we liked Shanthi, were high up in Rani-paati’s gooseberry tree pocketing handfuls of her not-yet-ripe berries. Killing swollen mosquitoes against each other’s legs and careful to stay just out of sight of paati’s bathroom window, we watched the spectacle from a distance. As the street lamps flickered noisily on, we momentarily forgot to keep a sharp eye and ear out for her to hope that the snake was fully dead before it burned.
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