The Pass !

It was a nice sunny Sunday afternoon. Indira Aunty, Amma-ma and I were taking a walk along the streets of an unknown place.Walking down the streets towards south, we noticed that there were lots of tress on either side of the road and at a distance of around hundred meters from us, stood a Castle. The castle seemed very old with high raised walls surrounding it from all sides. From far we could figure out the top structure, however, as we approached it, only the high compound walls were visible to us.

I stepped ahead a little to find out if there was any door in between the walls to enter into the compound. As I walked along the walls, I saw a small iron gate allowing the entry inside the compound. I was quite excited to find the entrance and called up Indira Aunty and Amma-ma showing them the entrance. I could see a lot of excitement on Auntie's face. She seemed really interested and curious to see the structure which from far appeared to be a castle. Amma-ma however seemed very tired, she sat outside the compound under a tree. So Aunty and I decided to get inside the compound to see the castle.

It was a small iron gate so I let aunty enter first. As I followed her I noticed a beautiful piece of wooden snake lying on the ground. I picked it up. It was niche in itself, a Cobra beautifully carved out on a wooden piece. I kept it in my pocket.

As we entered the compound we saw a huge Castle standing in the midst of pruned field. It was an art in itself. The Castle stood at around 50 meters from the entrance. We decided to walk towards it to take a closer look.We noticed that there was a small water stream flowing across the field and a small bridge was constructed for the visitors to cross over to reach the castle. I looked at Aunt and with a shake of head we decided to cross the bridge. This time it was me who stepped on the bridge first. Aunty followed me.

We had no idea about the surprise waiting in store for us.

It was hardly 2 steps that I walked onto the bridge when suddenly I heard a strong and loud hiss. Before I could understand anything, Aunty yelled, "Kunaaaaaaaaaaaal, there is a Naag there!". And I saw a huge Snake, shiny black in color, perhaps a Cobra, standing on the other side of the bridge with it's fang, fully spread and was as tall as me. Both of us were shell shocked and didn't know what to do. The Cobra stood right up as if trying to check for our purpose of being there. Both of us looked at it. It stared back and shook it's hood.

We were in a dilemma, whether to move or not. Surprisingly, more than being scared, both of us seemed to be mesmerized with such a divine avatar of the Cobra. "Let's wait for some time to see if it moves into the bushes or not", aunt said.
So we decided to wait there on the bridge without moving an extra inch forward. Cobra stood in it's position unmoved looking at us continuously.

As I looked at the Cobra, I realized that it looked exactly like the wooden carved snake that I had found at the entrance of the compound. I took it out from the pocked and said, "aunty, look, doesn't it look exactly like our Cobra?". Aunty was quite surprised and said, "oh, yes, they look the same, where did you get it?" "At the gate", I said.

"This is the Pass", aunty said. "What Pass?", I inquired.
"Looks like we have got the pass to cross the bridge and are allowed to see the castle, the Cobra if sees the wooden one in your hand might allow us to cross the bridge", aunty said with a confident smile at her face.

As we were discussing, I flashed the wooden carved snake towards the Cobra. And surprisingly, our bigger Cobra shook his fang once again, lowered down, slipped into one of the bushes and finally disappeared from our vision.

-KGS