While sipping tea, Pakirappa took Senan to years back, to a time when the indigenous Gowda community had good fortune from the paddy down the valley along the banks of the river till the tarred road.
'I had once told you about the giant cobra that served the indigenous Gowda community for many years,' Pakirappa remarked, a little embarrassed by his ability to persuade Senan.
It used to pass through most of the farmlands, hills, ravines, and gorges and return to the restricted forest after passing through the lonely highland village of Devagiri at the hill foot. Once a year, a nearly 25-foot-long cobra emerged from the deep, reserved forest. Its body had been so massive, like that of a python.
The indigenous Gowdas generally believed that their farming flourished due to the blessing of this snake, which they took as the embodiment of Naga. They performed poojas to commemorate its emergence and journey across the village.
During the late 1980s, one of the immigrant landowners belonging to the higher rank of Soukarar, who owned most of the valleys, shot the cobra. He had been in a hurry, and the snake did not move out of his way. Besides, it lay across the path, oblivious to the horn and the insults it received.
Nobody dared speak up to him because he was the then-Soukarar. Along with his men, he trampled its body ferociously for being unable to move it a little.
It had a devastating effect on the people. The paddy was all destroyed without any harvest for two years, forcing the Gowdas to abandon the land for a distant, isolated village. During this time, the landowner's family suffered several unnatural deaths. He lost much of his land and became bedridden. A few months later, he built a Sacred Grove for Naga on his land on the advice of astrologers. It either delayed or lessened the severity of the curse that the then-Soukarar and his blood relatives had faced.
'Do you know, how Soukarar became bedridden?' Pakirappa asked Senan and continued, 'On that day, the Soukarar was in a hurry to meet someone. He shouldn't have left when the Naga blocked his way. Instead of taking it as an omen, the Soukarar killed it and dragged its body along the way. When he arrived at his destination, he was brutally attacked there. He narrowly escaped the murder attempt.'
'It should not have been killed,' Senan wished.
'What excellent things this cobra has done to people!' Pakirappa said, 'The Gowda men, who had paddy fields along the river's bank, worshipped it as Naga and were blessed too. All of them, except two or three families, fled when the land faced famine after the cobra was killed.'
They did not wait for the Soukarar's promise of bringing back holiness to the land through the Sacred Grove.
'That's how I missed Valsala,' whimpered Pakirappa.
Pakirappa anticipated that Senan would inquire further about her. Senan, on the other hand, remained silent.
Senan had learned from the Dhani that Pakirappa had married four women in his community. They were leading a happy life with his children in two houses in a compound in his village. They drove Pakirappa away whenever he visited them.
(to be continued...)