They said I killed a snake. I did. A poisonous

cobra inhabited the wet grass near the

bamboo thickets that grew near the Yamuna

River. Some of my friends had spotted it, and

they said it was almost twelve feet long with

a hood the size of a small room. It had

always lived there, its poison turning the

water a darker, murky brown.

I had personally never seen the cobra,

probably because I rarely ventured towards

the bamboo thickets. I preferred the cooler

shade of the kadam trees, and ma had in a fit

of paranoia had forbidden me from going to

the river at all, forget the part said to be the

haunt of the dreaded Kalia Naag, the cobra I

ended up killing.

This is how it happened. Radha liked to

make my flutes. My flute was the bansuri,

made from a single hollow shaft of bamboo.

It was painful and time taking work. The

bamboo had to be cut down to an exact

length, and the holes made keeping in mind

the pitch. It required precision, a refined

sense of music, tonality, a steady hand.

Radha made my bansuri because she could,

and also because she could not bear to have

someone else shape the one object I held in

my hands and kept with me always. The

bansuri was not just an instrument I loved. It

was a piece of her, crafted by her that I

carried with me all the time. It was her hands

that carved the hole into which my lips blew

to create the music that touched not just

everyone's heart but their very souls.

It is the maker of the bansuri who tunes it.

The maker creates the hole and plays the first

note. The hole must be enlarged if the note

does not sound right. Radha made my

bansuris. She was the first to bring the yet

unfinished bansuri to her lips. I played the

bansuri she kissed, laying my lips at the very

spot hers had been, and the sound of love

that the world heard when I played, its

genesis lay in that very first kiss where our

lips never met.

Radha went to fetch the perfect piece of

bamboo to make my flute, my bansuri. She

went to the grove said to be inhabited by

Kalia, the twelve feet long, hooded cobra.

The grove where no birds or animals

approached, and she went there for me. She

thought she had found what she was looking

for when she heard a hissing in the grass

nearer the waters of the Yamuna.

As Radha looked towards the noise, she saw

the forked tongue of the beast flick out,

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

almost as if smelling her before an attack.

Radha has always been the bravest person I

have known. But at that moment, she was

terrified. She had heard the tales of the

deadly snake from our friends and Pindaka,

so she ran back towards where we played our

silly boyish games, my rag-tag bunch of

friends and me.

I heard Radha running, and she nearly

collapsed by the time she reached my arms.

"I think I just saw Kalia. It flicked its tongue

out at me." She was breathing in huge gasps

and taking in gulps of air, holding on to her

side. Kinki, a friend, ran to get some water

for her to drink.

Radha’s fear and helplessness did what very

few could do. It angered me. Enraged by the

creature that had troubled Radha, I headed

towards the bamboo groves at the banks of

the Yamuna. I did not have to look for it. It

stood almost erect on its tail, a third of its

body in the air, ready to strike out. The hood

spread out it, threatening, intimidating. I saw

it flick its tongue, and it brought back the

image of a scared and breathless Radha. I

would not let that tongue flick out again.

I circled Kalia, staying a good ten feet away.

Moving fast, I lunged at the cobra's tail

grasping it in my hand. The snake squirmed.

It twisted itself into coils, desperate to get its

fangs into me. But I was faster and could

easily dodge its strike. Kalia wrapped his

length around me, dragging me towards the

river, possibly assuming I would be weaker

in the water. I could feel the snake's hold

grow tighter as it tried to crush me. I kept my

bansuri tucked into my waistband. I pulled it

free, breaking it so that I may have a jagged

edge which I pushed into the snake. Kalia

was a monstrosity, but he was a snake with

soft skin on the back. My bansuri used as a

butcher's knife freed me from the hold of the

cobra, although it continued to hiss and spit

venom, injured but still strong enough to kill.

But I was no ordinary ten-year-old boy. I

kept my grip on the snake's tail. Soon

enough, I felt Kaila tire. With one mighty

heave, I swung the twelve feet cobra with my

ten-year-old hand like a lasso and brought its

hood down on the banks of the Yamuna

River. Kalia was spent. I raised my left foot

and brought it down on the hood of the

cobra, raising my right hand clutching my

broken bansuri in a moment of triumph, and

that is how my friends found me when they

reached the bamboo groves.

Those stories you heard of me dancing on the

hood of a subdued Kalia, merrily playing my

bansuri- like I keep saying, just stories. A

fictionalized account of what people saw.

But these stories built the idea of me, so I let

them add little changes as they recounted my

exploits, embellishing them with details that

turned me from one of them to so much

more. I might not have been God. They

ensured I became God.