Memories

Memories are subjective. Stories are told by different people in different ways, something like the game called telephone where people sit in a circle and whisper a phrase or sentence in the next person's ear. It could begin with the first person saying “I gave my brother a ride to work” and the last person to have it whispered in their ear interprets it as, “I saw my mother ride a stork.”  

Hi Fran,

I have finally transcribed my notes from my January trip to India. One of the gems I gleaned from the trip was a story I heard while visiting with Raja and his family. When I visited with them, he had a couple of visitors in the house. One was an organic farmer he is working with and the other is a relation who is 72 years old. The older man is a retired Police inspector who worked on many interesting cases during his career.

The subject came up about the python that you kept as a pet. This is a common theme in Kolar; everyone seems to remember the snake!

Before you left, the story goes; you donated the snake to a local college. One of the female instructors at the college had a fondness for the snake and was a subject of interest of hers because she taught biology at the college.

The story goes like this: every term she would walk into the first class of the year with the snake draped around her shoulders. The students sitting in the front rows would bolt to the back of the classroom, scared out of their wits because of the snake.

The friend who was the police inspector told the story first hand because he was one of the students in the class! Apparently, the snake lived a long time and became enormous later in life. Another great small world story!

Mike

Hi Mike,

What a fantastic story! I named it Hista after the serpent in one of the Tarzan stories. Even if it is apocryphal, I like the police constable’s version better than mine. The real story is a little more mundane and less glamorous, and goes like this.

About a month before I left Kolar I fed it a chicken so that it could survive a couple of months without eating. The next day I gave the cage to Mani, put the snake in a sack and drove until I found a secluded, wooded place alongside a rice paddy and released it, hoping that it would thrive and do what nature had intended it to do.

The exotic story of the college professor coming into the classroom with it draped around her shoulders is much better than I could have imagined.

Thanks for relating it.

Fran