I’m sure by now everybody knows who Bear Grylls is or at least stumbled upon watching his Man Vs Wild survival series. I’ve been a huge fan of his series from the time it was aired on television for I would always be amazed watching him jump off a cliff, swim bare in ice cold water, get stung by bees, desert journeys and you name it, I’ve watched him with great admiration. But what really made me get fixated to his show was the stuff he’d find to eat and survive while on his journey in inhospitable environments.

I’ve watched him devour carcass of a camel and sleep inside it, fit himself into a seal’s skin, squeeze out the insides of crawling worms and so on. I remember my stomach turn and feel nauseous when he would feast on his finds and on many accounts made my family watch them with me. I even went a step ahead and made my grandmother who came to visit me over the weekend watch  back-to-back episodes of Man Vs Wild for I was busy with work. I still remember her switching off the television after 8-9 episodes of Bear and skip dinner that night and yelling, “Don’t ever make me watch him again!!”. But I know she secretly loved him during the first few episodes at least or else she would not have made it to the ninth episode! Call it the Grylls overdose!

In India, a snake is considered sacred and a lot of women worship snake and even offer milk to get rid of the infamous “Sarpa Dosha”. If something is wrong in your life and you summon the courage to go to an astrologer to find a cure, the astrologer might take a good look at your horoscope and connect your misery to a snake and over time there are many versions of “dosha” or curse for killing a snake or offending a snake in your previous birth and suffering in your present life because of the snake curse. So we have sarpa dosha, naga dosha, kaalasarpa dosha and every other Indian household member will have some or the other fancy version of the snake dosha. The formula is a complicated problem = a scarier name for the dosha. I know about this because I have my own version of the sarpa dosha and my parents shelling huge amount of money to get rid of the curse. If a person is unmarried, no kids, no job the best answer to the problem is to blame the innocent snake. So the “parihaara” or solution is to find the closest ant-hill (technically that’s where snakes live) which majority of temples have around them and then perform some elaborate “pooja” or ceremony by offering the snake with milk for X number of days.

Post the ceremony and feeding the snake for X number of days, you walk away assuming your problem is solved. In my opinion, well atleast somebody is feeding the snake in some form or the other. Lucky snake. I guess other snakes of the area would have an internal understanding among themselves for some form of token system on being the one to sit inside the sacred ant hill and be the King/Queen aka pampered one of the month.

A lot of Bear Grylls episodes show him hunting, killing snakes and relishing it. I wonder what most of our astrologers have to say about that and the versions of dosha’s they’d pin on to Mr.Grylls? For all I know, my problems in this birth has been connected by astrologers to killing one  snake in some previous birth which I don’t even know if I would have in the first place. I have not performed any pooja because I don’t believe feeding a snake will solve my human problem. I know the snakes living around temples are well fed by now and would probably puke if I go with my glass of milk, I don’t even know if snakes really like to drink milk?? Who knows? Poor vegetarian snake. Instead, why hasn’t anybody found a snake in the wild and then thought about feeding some small rat or creature to it? Snake finds it delicious, you get the good karma and your snake dosha is resolved. Why present a King/Queen snake with milk everyday and get the snake thinking “Urrrgh!!! Milk again?? Take that you human more bad karma for you!”

I’d only know if this Snake dosha is true if I happen to meet Mr.Grylls in his next life  and probably watch him do his version of pooja or else lets let the snake feeding frenzy go on for a while.

Which fancy snake dosha do you have?