The Blind Snake of Andaman and Nicobar

SSSSNAKE. There are snakes in these islands. Plenty of them. The rented house at Pathargudda, where we stayed for a year and eight months introduced me to snakes of the Andamans. Hardly a week at Port Blair, I went to use the toilet in the morning, groggy after previous night’s drinking to the uncertainties the new land had in store camouflaged under my celebratory posture at the bar at Sun Sea Resort. As I opened the door, I woke up with a sudden jolt from my hang over. An orange coloured SNAKE about 3 feet long slithered and crossed my feet as it went into the kitchen which was adjacent to the loo. Something told me not to scream. I called Kalamati, who looked for the creepy crawly without panicking. This was the first time I saw her “Girl of the Himalalyas” side. She found the snake near the gas cylinder, and tapped the floor as she opened the door and let the snake leave. Before this I had seen people panic, scream and then kill these creatures mercilessly. We talked about the incident with our neighbours, who also were our landlady’s family.
That day we heard of the almost deadly Andhaa Saanp or Blind Snake of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. A snake everyone claimed to have seen, but everyone had a different description. Black and thin said some, striped and reddish said others, dotted and long said a few, as we travelled the islands. Everyone we met painted the snake everyone knew with a different colour. But, that the snake was blind was reiterated in unison, and that it came out in the night only was also a common refrain. Its bite does not kill, but many cases of amputation were heard of, said many I got the creeps! .The legend was growin on us!

We found snakes (12 to be exact) of different hues and sizes in the attic, in the kitchen, in the loo and other places in our wooden rented house, and each time Kalamati led them out like she knew them back from Nepal.

Six months in the islands, and just back from a trip to Havelock where it was raining and we had trekked in slush through a dense little forest to Elephant Beach, my right leg started swelling, and feverish shivers visited me in the nights. I did not bother for 3 days, but the swelling grew and fever shivers more frequent. I decided to talk to Sulochana Didi, our landlady’s 50 year old daughter who runs a clinic at the footsteps of ours and her house, Rakesh Memorial Clinic. She gave me medicines, reprimanded me for not coming to her earlier. She said the two words I had heard so often- Blind Snake! That is what probably had bitten me in Havelock.

The fever stopped gradually with Didi’s medications, but I limped as my right leg writhed in pain for three months. Puss oozed copiously and every morning was dressing and cleansing time. Medicines formed a part of my diet. Three long months!
I still have a three inch scar as a memento just below my knee.

September 5, 2008, the day we entered our newly built home and were setting up things, there it was—a black 2 feet snake resting in our corridor. I went up the Girl from the Himalayas and pointed at the spot closing my eyes pretending blindness!