The original name of the village was Sunder Gaon or 'the beautiful village' on account of its location on the countryside surrounded by a pretty panorama of land and hills. Its population consists of about six thousand souls and their mainstay was farming. When the monsoon season arrives, the rains take over every nook and corner of the landscape. It is the time for planting rice, which is the staple food of the inhabitants.
The greenery then takes over with miles and miles of paddy fields covering the long stretches of the countryside with men and women in muddy fields planting the stalks of the crop. Some transplant the seedlings with a definite plan when the insert is pushed up to three centimetres into the soil and the rows at a definite distance. The others do the transplants at random distances. Most plant it during rainy season as it increases the surrounding vegetation for mutual shading of the growing plants.
While wading through the deep mud, some people come across other small creatures usually the crawling ones like worms or other creatures like snakes that are usually trying to find higher ground for dry spots of uplands of the village from the flooded lowlands. The planters are bound to step on these creatures unknowingly and during the years there have been fatalities from snakebites but not many as a majority of these creatures are of non-poisonous type but when a bitten person is jolted into a shock and panic whatever type the snake may be. There is a hospital a few miles away which keep the antidote serum and if one is lucky to reach it, then fatality can be avoided.
Some years back the crops began to fail either due to lack of seasonal rains or decrease of yield from the paddy fields and most people could not account for that sudden change. There have been droughts before but they were offset with adequate monsoon the following years but it was difficult to pinpoint the reduction in yields from the harvests so regularly. The priest performed some rituals for enhanced yields but without much success. They consulted another specialist in the farming industry but no one could explain the reason for it. Villagers put extra labours and hard work into their fields and then left the whole thing in the wills of gods.
Then the rains came with a vengeance and it rained unceasingly for four days without any stop. All the land around the village was flooded and so were the low-lying surroundings villages. It did not do much damage to Sunder Gaon due to its elevated position in the district. The villagers observed that besides people coming from the adjacent districts to take shelter on the higher grounds of their village, there were other creatures too, doing the same thing. There were snakes too, seeking shelter in the village by swimming through the floodwaters.
On the first day of such happenings, people sighted about half a dozen of these creatures but soon their numbers began to increase to the dread of the villagers who tried to lock themselves behind their doors and watched the panorama through the windows or through chinks of their wooden doors. The strange thing that they noticed was that the army of snakes kept themselves to a piece of a plot outside the village and did not move into the vicinity of the village where most people were lived. In order to discuss further action, they decided to have a meeting in the village temple. They discussed all the options opened to them. Firstly to leave the snakes alone but there were many flaws with this proposition. Suppose their numbers even increased to some enormous proportion? They would take over the village and then the villagers had to leave their land and this was impossible to envisage. They could not leave the village as they depended on their lands and farms to make a living and they could not simply be driven out by those lowly creatures. They had to take a firmer action and a united stand, they had to either kill them or drive them back to the territories where they had come from.
Before mapping out their strategy they observed the creatures from a safe distance. There were creatures of all sizes and colours. The majority were the king cobras but others were there including rat snakes who lived mostly on catching the rats of which there were plenty in the village and the fields. They would be useful in protecting their crops from the vermin. There were so many other varieties and they called a snake expert to identify those.
The expert identified numerous varieties both poisonous and non-poisonous. He explained that most of these were king cobras. Most of these are nearsighted creatures and are all colour blind and do not have eyelids to cover their eyes. They can smell pretty well by their sensitive tongues but not much by their nostrils. The tongue normally picks up the odour molecules. There were few pythons and pit vipers too and these have sensing pits, which can help them to detect and catch warm-blooded animals like rodents and birds even in complete darkness
Dog-faced water snakes could catch and swallow fish and other marine creatures. When they come on the land, their movements were rapid and so sometimes they are called `sidewinders.` People were anxious to know how the venomous snake kill their victims and the expert explained that their venom is not composed of a single substance but was toxic saliva made up of a mixture of chemical enzymes. They attacked their victims through blood toxin, which attacks the blood circulatory system damaging muscle tissues and causing excessive scarring and gangrene, which may result in amputation of a limb.
The poison attacked the central nervous system too resulting in heart failure, breathing difficulties and eventually to respiratory paralysis. The death then occurred due to the collapse of the whole bodily system. At this time, the chief priest intervened and put forward reasons for not killing the creatures. He directed the audience to ancient mythological scriptures where the serpent has been a symbol of the flow of energy in human body as in kundalini yoga where the serpent power lies coiled at the lowest chakra or energy centre of the body and when it is awakened and made to travel upwards through earth, water, heat, air and space chakra and when comes to eye centre where yogi can control its flow to master the lower chakra and becomes controller of all the material reality and further when this female force Parvati meets its consort Shiva residing in brain chakra, a yogi can taste enlightenment.
Furthermore ancient Indian sculpture depicted the union of Naga and Nagini as a significant metaphysical force of the universe as in the creative union of male and female forces. A further example of such visual arts being Lord Vishnu riding in a snake vehicle and seven hooded cobras protecting Jina in his meditation. During the festival of Nag Panchami, the snakes are revered. Cobras are trapped, worshipped, fed with rats and then set free. Due to its intrinsic power, the snake is both revered and reviled. Krishna has to battle with a king snake to subdue its power and sometimes is depicted in a blue coloured body as a result of snake poison.
The people heeded the pleas of the priest and asked him how they could win the co-operation of the snakes for their benefits as otherwise, they have to get rid of all those creeping creatures. The priest thought about it but stated he could not give an answer straight away and the matter needs to be thought over and he would have a plan ready in two days time. The people agreed as most of them were inclined, to the abhorrence of killing any living creatures however revile they might have looked in appearance.
They gathered in the village hall again to listen to the priest again. He needed to perform a ritualistic ceremony to charm the snakes, as not to bite people or use their venom against any of the village inhabitants. Recitation of simple mantras would not do, he had to organize some dramatic and theatrical performance. In the meantime, people saw that the snakes were getting lethargic and there was a lack of movements among them and people concluded that the creatures were getting weaker on account of lack of food and the women of the village took jugs of milk and earthen pots near that place in order to save them. They poured milk into those pots and waited further whether anything happened. To the amazement of people, the snakes began to move towards it, attracted by the prospects of food and sensing the milk due to their acute sense of smell and people were happy that they have done a good deed by dint of saving a few snakes which otherwise might have died due to hunger. Children were especially entertained by that strange spectacle and imitated their crawling movements in the village streets to the amusements of the adults.
The priest recruited some dancing girls and 'saperas' or the snake charmers for the performance and scheduled it for a certain day. The villagers began to tempt the snakes by placing the food in and around the temple and they succeeded so and when any snake strayed into the people`s home, they chased it to the temple by a show of raised sticks and other threatening gestures. In that way, the snakes began to be trained by spoken words and gestures just like a dog gets trained by its owner.
The performance took place one afternoon in the temple. The dancing girls were dressed like snakes in their stripped costumes, as snake goddesses, with hoods on their heads and when people thronged to the hall and sat there, the snakes were invited too by putting saucers of milk around the stage. Few guards stood with their sticks ready in case of any mishap and then the show began. The 'saperas' came with their 'beens' or musical pipes made of dried bottle gourd plant and started an orchestra of their specially composed tunes. They were dressed in saffron robes and made an impressive scene. The dancing girls began to dance first in slow movements putting a spell on the snakes and with the snake charmers movements and music; the creatures were impressed and came under a sort of spell. The cobras stood with their hoods erect and danced to the music too, swaying with the movements. The people in the hall were spellbound too, with the misty evening sun-rays filtering through the windows. That impressive show lasted for some time.
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Things changed for the better in the village and that year there was an abundant yield from the v crops and since than every year in and out, it has not diminished and people are becoming prosperous and most of them attribute it to the presence of snakes amidst them. More snakes have come to stay and now there are nearly three thousand of them or one snake for two of the inhabitants. The creatures have learnt to keep away at arm's length from people. In the morning they go to houses for their daily breakfast and are fed by the woman folk. Most people have become used to their sight and are not alarmed accept the strangers or travellers to the village.
Recently the village was accorded with a certificate for preserving the wildlife of the district and also got mentioned in all the prestigious publications.