They said I killed a snake. I did. A poisonous

  cobra inhabited the wet grass near the

  bamboo thickets that grew near the Yamuna

  River. Some of my friends had spotted it, and

  they said it was almost twelve feet long with

  a hood the size of a small room. It had

  always lived there, its poison turning the

  water a darker, murky brown.

  I had personally never seen the cobra,

  probably because I rarely ventured towards

  the bamboo thickets. I preferred the cooler

  shade of the kadam trees, and ma had in a fit

  of paranoia had forbidden me from going to

  the river at all, forget the part said to be the

  haunt of the dreaded Kalia Naag, the cobra I

  ended up killing.

  This is how it happened. Radha liked to

  make my flutes. My flute was the bansuri,

  made from a single hollow shaft of bamboo.

  It was painful and time taking work. The

  bamboo had to be cut down to an exact

  length, and the holes made keeping in mind

  the pitch. It required precision, a refined

  sense of music, tonality, a steady hand.

  Radha made my bansuri because she could,

  and also because she could not bear to have

  someone else shape the one object I held in

  my hands and kept with me always. The

  bansuri was not just an instrument I loved. It

  was a piece of her, crafted by her that I

  carried with me all the time. It was her hands

  that carved the hole into which my lips blew

  to create the music that touched not just

  everyone's heart but their very souls.

  It is the maker of the bansuri who tunes it.

  The maker creates the hole and plays the first

  note. The hole must be enlarged if the note

  does not sound right. Radha made my

  bansuris. She was the first to bring the yet

  unfinished bansuri to her lips. I played the

  bansuri she kissed, laying my lips at the very

  spot hers had been, and the sound of love

  that the world heard when I played, its

  genesis lay in that very first kiss where our

  lips never met.

  Radha went to fetch the perfect piece of

  bamboo to make my flute, my bansuri. She

  went to the grove said to be inhabited by

  Kalia, the twelve feet long, hooded cobra.

  The grove where no birds or animals

  approached, and she went there for me. She

  thought she had found what she was looking

  for when she heard a hissing in the grass

  nearer the waters of the Yamuna.

  As Radha looked towards the noise, she saw

  the forked tongue of the beast flick out,

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  almost as if smelling her before an attack.

  Radha has always been the bravest person I

  have known. But at that moment, she was

  terrified. She had heard the tales of the

  deadly snake from our friends and Pindaka,

  so she ran back towards where we played our

  silly boyish games, my rag-tag bunch of

  friends and me.

  I heard Radha running, and she nearly

  collapsed by the time she reached my arms.

  "I think I just saw Kalia. It flicked its tongue

  out at me." She was breathing in huge gasps

  and taking in gulps of air, holding on to her

  side. Kinki, a friend, ran to get some water

  for her to drink.

  Radha’s fear and helplessness did what very

  few could do. It angered me. Enraged by the

  creature that had troubled Radha, I headed

  towards the bamboo groves at the banks of

  the Yamuna. I did not have to look for it. It

  stood almost erect on its tail, a third of its

  body in the air, ready to strike out. The hood

  spread out it, threatening, intimidating. I saw

  it flick its tongue, and it brought back the

  image of a scared and breathless Radha. I

  would not let that tongue flick out again.

  I circled Kalia, staying a good ten feet away.

  Moving fast, I lunged at the cobra's tail

  grasping it in my hand. The snake squirmed.

  It twisted itself into coils, desperate to get its

  fangs into me. But I was faster and could

  easily dodge its strike. Kalia wrapped his

  length around me, dragging me towards the

  river, possibly assuming I would be weaker

  in the water. I could feel the snake's hold

  grow tighter as it tried to crush me. I kept my

  bansuri tucked into my waistband. I pulled it

  free, breaking it so that I may have a jagged

  edge which I pushed into the snake. Kalia

  was a monstrosity, but he was a snake with

  soft skin on the back. My bansuri used as a

  butcher's knife freed me from the hold of the

  cobra, although it continued to hiss and spit

  venom, injured but still strong enough to kill.

  But I was no ordinary ten-year-old boy. I

  kept my grip on the snake's tail. Soon

  enough, I felt Kaila tire. With one mighty

  heave, I swung the twelve feet cobra with my

  ten-year-old hand like a lasso and brought its

  hood down on the banks of the Yamuna

  River. Kalia was spent. I raised my left foot

  and brought it down on the hood of the

  cobra, raising my right hand clutching my

  broken bansuri in a moment of triumph, and

  that is how my friends found me when they

  reached the bamboo groves.

  Those stories you heard of me dancing on the

  hood of a subdued Kalia, merrily playing my

  bansuri- like I keep saying, just stories. A

  fictionalized account of what people saw.

  But these stories built the idea of me, so I let

  them add little changes as they recounted my

  exploits, embellishing them with details that

  turned me from one of them to so much

  more. I might not have been God. They

  ensured I became God.