Escaping by the skin of our teeth

Seated on a deckchair in the spacious lawn fronting our rented house in Bareilly I was watching the football match being played in the ground on the other side of the road. After a little while the game gained momentum and one of the teams shot a goal.

The enthusiastic spectators around the ground raised their hands going hog wild, their screams of 'oohs' and 'ouchs' renting the air. Springing up in a snap from the chair I lunged towards the fence around our house boosting the teams with shouts of encouragement at top of my voice, since I too had been a crazy football player in my school days.

Given the twilight descending, the match ended only to be closely followed by a sudden outage of power that plunged the entire area into an inky darkness.

Sitting afar from me at the back on a folding chair in the same lawn and up to her eyes in knitting a cardigan with a woolen thread of alternate tar-black and canary yellow strands was my missus.

In the pitch darkness she accidentally dropped the bundle of thread on the concrete border skirting our house. Bending down and looking around and failing to find the jag she called out our son, Suresh to bring the torchlight from inside.

Fumbling for the light in the utter darkness and unable to get it the boy soon lit a chimney lamp and brought it close to

the spot where my missus was looking for the bundle of thread.

"Mummy" he screamed shrilly noticing his mom stretching her hand and being about to pick up what she had just then dropped. Shocked by the earsplitting scream of the boy she in next to no time withdrew her hand with a flinch of fear as the object began to show signs of animation by wriggling a blind bit.

It was a small viper that straight melted into the bawn. As if by a stroke of good luck my wife escaped from what would otherwise have been a deadly sting by the venomous reptile.

Departing from Agra University office and heading towards the gate flanked by my wife and son, on my left hand side I still remember, I was walking a step ahead of them. All of a sudden something resembling a short length of a discarded flexible rubber hose lying in front of me drew my quick attention.

Raising my right foot I was all but attempting to stir it out of my way when a sudden movement of the object sent a chill down my spine. To my horror it turned out to be a short, stout, jet black snake that began wriggling into the bushy fence around the playground adjacent to the road we were walking on.

It struck me that it was sheer providence that spared us from impending deadly bites by snakes on those bloodcurdling occasions.