The most fascinating and saddest snake in the world is by Kipling: come and see the great white cobra of the Cold Houses

Among all the many rare objects that I have at home, an

Indian

ankus or

ankusa stands out for its mystery and exoticism,

a short goad for elephants, the traditional instrument used by

mahouts

or mahouts, the drivers of the pachyderms, to control them.

It's like a small boat hook.

It was given to me by my mother-in-law who had acquired it many years ago on a trip with her husband to India and she thought that it would excite me more than a watch or a tie, and she was certainly not wrong.

My

ankus

, with a painted wooden handle and a bronze tip with a hook adorned with the figure of a small elephant, is not at the level of the precious and valuable ones that can be seen in the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert or the Metropolitan, pieces ceremonial worthy of the Delhi Durbar and authentic works of art, but it is a beautiful object.

Although it cannot be forgotten that, like a riding crop, a whip or spurs, it was created with the purpose of inflicting harm on a sentient being.

The

mahouts

, who have handled elephants for centuries—used as pack and work animals and prestige and

shikar

(hunting) mounts in Asia—use them by sticking the spike into the most sensitive parts of the animal such as the mouth and the back. from behind the ears.

Curiously, when I see my

ankus,

that mute storyteller, I think less of elephants than of snakes, especially a huge white cobra...

A valuable elephant goad, as you will remember, is the central object of the plot of one of Mogwli's most exciting adventures in

The Jungle Book

(specifically in

The Second Jungle Book,

which appeared a year after the first, in 1895, with more stories):

The king's ankus

.

For me, that story has something very special and always puts me on the verge of tears.

I couldn't explain exactly why, but it has to do with the melancholic sense of wonder that the story inspires and the abysmal sadness that the protagonist cobra and her fate provoke in me.

In the story, Mowgli comes to congratulate

Kaa

, the enormous python that lives in the Rock, for his change of skin (he has already had two hundred) and while they are bathing together, because they are great friends - you have to see in what beautiful way Kipling describes that friendship, so enviable for all of us who have a not very playful snake, even though it is also called

Kaa

-, the python tells him about a very special cobra that he has met in the Cold Lairs, the old abandoned city where they already lived. intense hours with the monkeys.

That snake, “of the Poisonous People that carries death in its front teeth”, is a White Hood, a white cobra, “old as the jungle itself” (and cousin of Zumosol of the Nag and Nagaina of

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

) , and

Kaa

tells Mowgli that he spoke to him of things greater than all his knowledge.

So, the Little Man piqued by curiosity, the two of them go there.

More information

The children of the jungle always cross the border

They arrive at the Cold Abodes, solitary and silent, illuminated by the moon, and from the ruins of the queen's pavilion they access a buried underground staircase to a large cavern or basement whose vaulted ceiling is pierced by tree roots.

A gloomy, dark and sinister place where nothing can be seen.

"Am I nothing?" he then says, standing before Mowgli, "the most enormous cobra that his eyes have ever seen... an animal about eight feet long and discolored from always being in darkness, until it has taken on a certain appearance like of old ivory.”

Even the spectacle-shaped markings he wore on his extended hood, we are told, had faded and were now pale yellow.

“He had eyes like two rubies and in short he offered the most surprising appearance that can be found.”

Kipling knew about snakes: in the prologue to

The Jungle Book

he thanks for his information “one of the main herpetologists of northern India, a daring and independent researcher who,” he adds ominously, “resolved not to live but to know, sacrificed his "life to the study of oriental

thanatophidia

."

An ankus or focino to guide elephants.

The old cobra, who has been killing intruders for years, asks for news of the city above, the city of one hundred elephants and twenty thousand horses, the city of the King of twenty kings.

And she believes that she has gone deaf because she no longer hears the bustle and the drums of war.

Mowgli doesn't understand anything (he doesn't even know what a king is), but

Kaa

compassionately tries to explain to the cobra that the city no longer exists and there is only the jungle over there, taking over the ruins.

The cobra refuses to believe it.

She is the guardian of the King's treasure since Kurrum Rajah, she explains, imprisoned her there when her skin was dark.

And it continues to protect the countless riches—gold and silver coins in a five-foot-thick layer in which are half-submerged jewel-encrusted elephant pavilions, royal palanquins, cuirasses and helmets, and piles of precious stones, plus some dull skulls—, over which it patrols dragging its scaly belly.

She refuses to accept what they tell her.

“I never change.

Until the stone is lifted up again and the Brahmins come down singing songs that I know, and they feed me with hot milk, and the treasures are brought to light again, I will remain here.”

She always makes me think of my father when he was already losing his mind but he kept cutting out newspapers and trying to write his book.

Mowgli wanders around looking for something useful under the cobra's murderous gaze and finds a magnificent

ankus

, with an ivory handle and adorned with rubies, emeralds and turquoise.

That object, which the boy takes because he wants to see how it shines in the sun, will cause a chain of deaths.

But the most dramatic part of the story is when the great cobra pounces on Mowgli and he discovers that the snake can no longer kill: the fangs are black and consumed in the gum, and it no longer has poison.

It is dry.

The cobra, embarrassed, asks to be killed, and while her visitors leave, she remains in her lair, prison and grave hissing and cursing madly.

And there he continues.

Religious celebration with decorated elephants.

I never met Kipling (so I couldn't talk to him about snakes, or Kafiristan, for that matter), but I did meet Patrick O'Brian, with whom I was friends (at times).

And you will say, what does the great writer of maritime novels mean here when we are talking about elephants,

ankus

and cobras?

Beyond the fact that Kipling also wrote

Captains intrepid

, it turns out that O'Brian has a beautiful novel very far from the sea and in which there are, precisely, elephants,

ankus

and even a white cobra!, a snake that also causes great sadness .

This is the book

Hussein, the Mahut

(Edhasa, 2009), a work from his youth (1938, thirty years before

Sea Captain and War

), in which the incipient O'Brian (signing with his real name of Patrick Russ ) became Kiplinesque and narrated the life and adventures of an elephant driver from the Raj as a child.

In the book—translated by my sister Patricia, who very orthodoxly changes the word

ankus,

which O'Brian uses in the original, to “focino” (RAE: “goad with a somewhat curved tip with which the elephant is governed and governed”) —, the author strings together tasty stories in the style of the

Arabian Nights

starting with Husein, Toomai's emulator and member of a dynasty of mahuts, who learns the traditions of elephant handling, including the language of the trade, Hathi .

The boy, enrolled in the public works service with government elephants, faces pachyderms that suffer from the

must

, the hormonal spike that drives them crazy,

dacoits

(bandits), wild dogs, a leopard, a rhinoceros and even a man-eating tiger.

Always with the help of his faithful companion, the unforgettable elephant

Jengahir.

Mowgli with the white cobra, in the movie 'The Jungle Book'.

And now comes the curious thing: during a bad time in which he had to pawn even the

ankus

(good old Husein, O'Brian tells us, does not use it and only carries it as a sign of his job), the boy dedicates himself to to act as a snake charmer and a specialist in cleaning the

sahibs

' houses of snakes, which he has previously put in (you have to earn a living).

And she carries an extraordinary white cobra—“of the purest white, with no other mark than Shiva's glasses on the hood”—that she has inherited from an old charmer who stole it from a village in Gujarat where she was venerated as the incarnation of a god. .

Hussein carries the snake, called

Vakrihsna,

with red eyes and which he is very fond of, coiled around his waist, which is already the way to carry a cobra.

That saves the boy's life when they attack him with a knife that sticks into the poor reptile.

O'Brian had not been to India when he wrote the novel, but he had certainly read Kipling...

When they reproach me at home for having too many things (another day I will tell them, or have I already done so?, about the big stuffed spider and the salacots), I clutch my old

ankus and

take refuge between my books and my snake while I sing for what under the

Song of the Jungle:

“This is the hour, strength and pride, sharp claw, cautious silence.”

And I tell myself that one day I have to visit old White Hood, to see how she is doing.