A huge king cobra had wrapped itself around the pipes that led to the set of bathrooms shared by six of us in my hostel. In the crowd that gathered to observe it from a distance, I was the first one to say that it should be killed. It was, after all, a question of survival of the fittest. We could not risk a six-seven feet poisonous snake lurking in our bathrooms. Besides, our institute was several kilometers away from the closest hospital. Snake serum not being freely available in most hospitals, a cobra bite in the middle of the night was almost an assured death. Yes, there were no two-ways about it. The cobra had to be killed.
The problem was that nobody dared to kill it. Sensing danger, the cobra had raised its hood, ready to strike. In the fading light of dusk its eyes appeared more frightening than before. The canteen boys refused to harm it. To kill a king cobra would be to incur the wrath of its mate. Finally, some of my classmates took the matter in their hands. They created a circle of fire around it so it would be unable to escape and attacked it with long bamboo sticks. I watched as my friends killed it with sudden brutal strikes. I burst into tears then, something that my classmates had never seen me do. I was the girl who never cried. ‘But you were the one who wanted it killed’ they said to me.
Yes, I was the one who had wanted it killed. I had wanted it because I cared more for our safety than the existence of the cobra. But the enormous sense of loss that came from killing something so beautiful hit me only then. I stood there, silent tears rolling down my cheeks, and watched the magnificent creature beaten to pulp. Learning for the first time about the inevitable injustice in the battle of survival.