MESSAGE BOARD
NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Snakes in their belfry

Snakes pop up from baskets, sway on the floor, pour out through the hands of children and sway before a pipe. No one pays much attention. For this is Padmakesharipur, home of the snake-charming Sapuakelas.

"Don't you keep other domestic animals like cows, goats etc? Similarly we keep snakes," says the headman. You miss a bit of the conversation as you watch infants play with snakes far larger than themselves.

"Don't these snakes bite them," you ask.

The headman gives me a toothless grin and assures me that there's nothing to worry.

"They are pets! They recognise their masters from the way they are touched."

Originally the 'Sapuakelas' were a nomadic tribe from Thakurgaon village in West Bengal, driven to Orissa by poverty and drought. After years of nomadic life, they settled down in Padmakesharipur, 13 kilometres from Bhubhaneswar. They established themselves with the help of the then king of Kanika whose fiefdom it was. They have been in Padmakesharipur for over five decades now.

The Sapuakelas keep their cobras, king cobras, pythons and kraits in baskets made of bamboo strips or reed and smeared with a mixture of cowdung and clay. They carry these baskets from roadside performance to village square show, travelling far and wide in between.

They also sell snakes -- to customers from Bihar, Bengal and Maharashtra and at such times their earnings take a boost. A cobra may fetch Rs 200, but the price of a king cobra may cost up to Rs 5,000. A python could fetch a little less than Rs 1000, says Sadei, who has been in this profession for over three decades.

But the Sapuakela community is a pale shadow of what it was. And that has something to with the stringent wildlife laws being enforced after the forests and general biodiversity began dwindling.

The law makes snake-catching without a licence punishable. Some of the young men have begun drifting out of the family profession and taking up odd jobs in the city; the women go around selling utensils. Used as they are to electronic entertainment and video games, the kids are not very enamoured of snake-charming either.

Moreover, snake-charming calls for training from an early age. Children have to be taught to locate snakes as well as extract their poisonous fangs.

There are many stories told about the Sapuakelas' dare-devilry. But those days seem done with. As the sun begins sinking into the west, we prepare to leave. We just wait to see some 'Sapuakelas' return from the city where they go to sell amulets, medicinal roots and even tattoos.

"We have to live somehow and feed these poor creatures. With the catch coming down and fewer takers for our brand of entertainment we are having a hard time. But why should we make these creatures suffer," asks one old man, adding that they have now begun releasing many of their snakes back into the forest.

"We may die of hunger but we can't stand the same thing happening to our snakes," he says.

Tell us what you think of this report