Venom In My Roots

Written by Prithi Srinivasan, Grade 11

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Photo by Prithi Srinivasan

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Often when one hears the word “curse,” the first thing that comes to mind is something out of a fairy tale or a children’s book. An angry witch lays an evil spell on a poor, unsuspecting princess. And without fail, a gallant knight will come to her rescue or a magic potion will save her. But curses in the real world are far less glamorous and fantastical, for they rarely do get lifted by a dashing protagonist. They linger, heavy and humid like fog, dampening the brightness of life. The burden gets passed down, daughter to daughter, with no escape, no salvation to be found. I was seven when I found out about the true nature of curses, when I found out about the curse that had been laid on my family.

When I was seven years old, I flew to India with my parents to celebrate my grandfather’s sixtieth birthday. My mother had been planning a grand ceremony for months; she rented out a hall, hired priests from the local temple, and invited friends and family. I had been anticipating my grandfather’s birthday for weeks, mainly because I would get to dress up. I had spent hours selecting four different pattu pavadai, colorful silk dresses, and even longer sifting through jewelry boxes to find bracelets and earrings that I could wear. But as soon as I waltzed into the hall, skipping in my shining dress, my whole world halted. All of my father’s relatives were wearing kolusu, silver anklets with little bells on them that shook with every step. I was filled with envy. I had to get my hands on a pair of kolusu.

Pouting, I walked up to my mother. “Mom,” I said. “Can I have some kolusu?”

Her expression darkened. “No, Prithi,” she said sharply, as if that was the end of the discussion.

My frown deepened. She didn’t realize how much I wanted them, how much I needed them. It wasn’t fair that everyone else was wearing them except me. The soft jingling of kolusu across the floor of the ceremony hall taunted me.

“Why not?” I prodded.

She pulled me into her lap. “A long time ago,” she began, “this family was cursed.”

I gasped violently. “How were we cursed?”

And then she began. “Your great-great-great-great-grandmother Muthulakshmi used to cook outside. She had a little clay oven filled with coals that she would light every afternoon when she was making dinner. One day, she was about to boil a pot of rasam but she didn’t know that a nalla pambu, a king cobra, was lying down in the ashes beneath the stove. The snake was resting after a long day in the sun, and the stove was the only shade he could find. Muthulakshmi lit the stove as usual, and the snake began to burn. He leapt out of the fire and began to scream at her with all the strength of the gods.

He said, ‘You have condemned me to a death in flames! You must suffer the same fate, you must pay this debt to me.’ As he screamed at her, he began to disappear into thin air.

“She called out to the snake. ‘Nalla pambu, please spare me, please spare my family. I didn’t mean to do this to you.’

“The snake looked at her deeply. He could only see her feet. She knelt down, bowing her head in front of the snake as he thought, and all he could hear was the jingling of her silver kolusu. He looked back up. ‘Fine. But your family shall live in fear of me. If I hear their footsteps, the sounds of their kolusu on the ground, they shall suffer my fate.’ And he vanished.

“This is why you cannot wear kolusu, so you will be safe and happy,” she finished.

I was immediately filled with disbelief. This couldn’t be true. This couldn’t be anything more than an old wives’ tale, a laughable superstition. Nothing would really happen if I put on a pair of kolusu.

“That’s not real.” I told her plaintively, anxious to get my hands on a pair of kolusu, regardless of the consequences.

“It is real,” she told me grimly. “When your uncle Kannan was a little baby, my mother put some kolusu on him so she could take some nice pictures. That night, we got a call from my grandmother, your great-grandmother. She said that she had dreamed of a snake, a nalla pambu. He had slithered up to her and told her with an evil smile that he had heard her grandson and that her family was no longer safe. We were terrified as soon as we heard that, and we immediately took the kolusu off of Kannan. We thought that would be the end of the curse, that the snake would leave us alone, but later that night, we found a dead cobra waiting for us on our doorstep.”

I was trembling in fear as the story came to an end. I could almost feel the snake’s presence lurking behind me, its fangs pointed, its eyes filled with hatred, and I was suddenly glad that my ankles were bare.

From that fateful day, every time I attended a family gathering, I was reminded of “the curse” either directly, by a scolding auntie or indirectly, witnessing the story being told to my younger cousins. The idea was drilled further and further into my head, until it became almost impossible for me to forget. And because I was unable to forget, I began to live my life constantly thinking about “the curse,” living in caution and fear, praying that I would never become a victim of the vengeful cobra, yet somehow, always knowing and believing that there was venom in my roots.