by Sonali Chulki

Created on: April 25, 2008

My whole body felt as if it was electrified using a live wire; my throat was parched and no sound came out of my mouth when I tried desperately to scream!

I was standing face to face, in fact eye to eye, to a COBRA! The most poisonous and the mesmerizing of all the snakes. I could clearly see his forked tongue and the 'U' mark on his yellow head. The enraged cobra was standing at least five feet tall and erect on its tail facing me and hissing!

Till that day I had only heard that a cobra hypnotizes human beings, believe me it is TRUE! It feels like a wave of some form of extra terrestrial element suddenly transmitting all through your body, and as if your entire life is being sucked up!

Later when the snake slithered back to its borough, and I reached the village, the locals said that no one had ever seen of any snake standing on its tail like this, they had only heard of folklore's which said that it happens only when the snake is outraged and is totally consumed with anger to do anything else! Lucky me!

This incident happened when I was around fourteen years old. This was my first tryst with death,and it taught me that life can be most unpredictable, but God does give you a second chance in life!

It has been almost two decades now, and a car can easily go down there on the shining tar road that has been since constructed, yet my dread for that place is still as strong and I have not set another foot there!

Another event which I recall very vividly was when I had been on our annual monsoon family trip. We had all gone to a nice little village with a beautiful and calm river on its outskirts. While the elders stayed at the farmhouse, we youngsters decided we should go for a dip in the river.

My parents warned us that the river was deceptive and that even the locals were afraid to get into the river during monsoon, as it swells up and falls all the way down the hills. We laughed away the warning, and thought indeed like all teen-agers, that adults are always afraid of things which we find exciting and blow things out of proportion just to scare and refrain us from having any fun and excitement at all.

After playing around for a while, we got into the river. Throwing all caution to the wind, we decided the water was pretty calm and began to go in deeper. We wouldn't have gone even a few feet ahead, when I realized I was being pulled down! Panic struck as I went deeper and deeper down, I could now see the bottom of the river, and strong under currents flowing below, taking everything in its way to an abysmal fall. In my panic, I even forgot to scream for help!

All of a sudden hope dawned to me because my cousins, who were along with me in the water, were in the vicinity. However they seemed to know nothing of my plight, and assumed I was frolicking in the water and enjoying! Within a minute, hope turned to misery and I started saying my last goodbyes to my mom and dad, friends and prayed feverishly to God, promising to be a good child and never ever defy my parents again, and felt the proverbial white light!

Finally one of my cousins realized that I seemed to be in genuine trouble, and dived in and pulled me out. By this time the rest of my cousins understood what was really happening and helped us both out and away from the dreadful river. All the energy and vigor in my body seemed to leave me as soon as I saw my mom and dad. Needless to mention all of us got an earful, but learned a very valuable lesson that day!

Today what I appreciate the most in life is the beauty in each passing day, and feel blessed twice over by the invisible hand of God!

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