HOSTAGE

It was siesta time on a Sunday when my younger daughter rushed in, breathless, shaking with fear, eyes moist with frenzy, and barely able to articulate-
“Dad..dad..snake..a big snake.. in the garden..in our backyard!”
Prompt, I got up, put on my slippers, and ran to the door.
“Dad..” the elder daughter, with better presence of mind, handed me a mosquito-net rod.
By now, quite a few people gathered in the garden. Bursting with energy, they rolled up their sleeves and brandished their weapons: hockey-sticks, walking-sticks, bamboo-sticks.
“Did anyone actually see the snake?” I verified.
“Yes uncle,” rang a jubilant chorus, ”so big, so dark, it could be a cobra or something!”
“Poisonous, eh, dad?”
“Look my child, snakes never attack unless provoked. Besides, only 4 percent of them are poisonous. That means, 96 percent, or say 90..may be 75, or at least 50 to 60 percent of them are harmless..er..i think so,” spake the omniscient oracle.
Well, the snake was nowhere to be seen. So the warriors, vented out their bravado by hitting at the shrubs and bushes.
“We shall not rest until we hunt him out of his hiding, and have him killed!” announced a guy very much like a big bug Prez declaring Holy War. Nevertheless, now the crowd started losing its enthu.
Suddenly, the snake showed itself, crawled round the corner, and...
“Dad! The snake has entered our house!” cried my daughter.
I was paralyzed with terror.
Sympathetic bystanders were too prudent to take further risk. They disappeared one by one. We four, left all alone, sat outside our own home like refugees.
Now it was dark. “Let’s go inside’” said my wife at last.
We entered the house, with wary steps, ever so cautiously. First thing, we switched on all the lights. I tightened my grip, slippery with sweat, over the rod. We searched all the rooms, even the bath and the loo, every place: the wardrobe, the cupboard, the shoe-rack and the kitchen-rack, behind the TV trolley and the sofa, under the divan, everywhere. And, as I groped under the bed with the rod,
‘. . .Hiss!’
I jumped with a start.
Well, that was the pressure cooker, which my wife had put on the gas. I laughed at myself.
But where was the snake?
That night we slept with all the lights on; actually we hardly slept.
Came the morning. The girls left for school.
“Should I stay back, to be with you?” I asked.
“And for how many days?” retorted she.
“Ok, I go to the office. Call me if required.”
She didn’t call. I came back in the evening. Nothing had happened.
Thus passed the day one, and day two, and day three, and so on. Sunday came, and went. Nothing happened.
The snake was never seen again. But an uneasy quiet looms over the household, like shadow of a giant hood. Girls wake up frightened in mid-sleep, come to us, cannot sleep, and doze off from sheer exhaustion of staying awake, still sobbing. All of us stay huddled together - like cattle under a tree, mutely watching the fury of the ravaging storm around.
Now it is more than a month since the snake was seen entering our house. The event has lost its news-value. Now nobody in the neighborhood ever talks about it.
The routine goes on. But everyone is lost in his or her own cocoon of dreadful silence. Girls no longer sing freely, fight freely, or shout at the top of their voice. They study, help their mother with the daily chores, and move around quietly like good girls. Their unnatural, precocious goodness pains me.
I no longer have my Sunday siesta. Neither the TV nor the books interest me. No longer, I am the full-throated bathroom singer I used to be!
Wife no longer wears flowers in her hair; fragrance, they say, excites snakes. We didn’t even have had one of those mind-cleansing, wholehearted fights since ages. Last Thursday was our marriage anniversary, and we didn’t even know it until after four days.

The unrelenting uncertainty has made us violent. Last week, my wife noticed a rat in the kitchen, and the good lady got wild.
“It’s only a rat, dear,” I tried to pacify her.
“It’s these rats that bring snakes after them! Don’t you know that?” she screamed.
The reminder made me furious. All of us got hold of whatever came handy – brooms, sticks, rods, whatever, and chased the brute, till it got exhausted. The poor thing stood there in the corner, resigned to fate, shaking and squeaking with fear. For a while, it reminded me of my daughter, my little cherub, similarly breathless, shaking with fear, eyes moist with frenzy, and barely able to articulate, as she saw the snake in the garden.
“Dad, don’t leave that bastard..let’s burn the bloody thing alive!” shrieked my little cherub.
I was aghast; where did she learn that?
However, highly contagious was the hysteria, and I, the man of the family, charged at our helpless target, struck it, hit it, butchered it with all my might. At last, the rat lay dead, its tiny pink mouth agape, blood trickling from it, the tail convulsing occasionally, and still my blows won’t relent.
Eddies of adrenaline still stirred my blood: the effect was almost erotic. True, violence is the Viagra for the impotent.
As I carried the dead rat with its tail to the garbage bin, a strange thought crept across my mind: do snakes, like human beings, watch some innocent fellow being done to death, and smile stealthily?
The thought of the snake drained all machismo out of me.
The rat incidence is long over. Since then, nothing untoward took place. Situation is under control and peaceful, as if under curfew.
Nobody knows where the snake is. May be, it has long left the house? Everyone saw the snake entering the house, but no one ever saw it leaving: the incertitude kills us.
The neighbors, the watchman, the snake handlers of the city, the family doc- all the Disaster Management Team- have assured us their immediate help ‘in case something happens’. Post-disaster management is ok man, but what do we do till then?
Till then, the invisible terror holds us at its mercy; dictates our life and singes it with its fiery breath; squeezes and stifles us in its chilling coils. It binds our limbs, clips our wings, and smothers our song. It holds each moment of our life hostage to its whims and will.