A Snake in the Grass

R.K. Narayan (1906–2001), one of India's greatest English writers and creator of the fictional town of Malgudi, is famous for his gentle humour and irony. 'A Snake in the Grass' uses a single afternoon of panic to expose human laziness, superstition and self-deception.

The sudden alarm and the confrontation with Dasa

On a quiet, sweltering afternoon, as the family enjoys its midday siesta, a cyclist frantically rings his bell at the gate and announces that a massive cobra has crawled into their compound, narrowly missing his bicycle wheel. He points to the track under the gate and rides off, leaving the household in absolute panic. The anxious mother and her four sons gather at the gate and turn their anger on Dasa, their old family servant, who is fast asleep in his shed.

They shake Dasa awake, but he dismisses their panic with a defensive 'There is no cobra' and tries to sleep again. The gathering neighbours call him the laziest servant on earth, blaming his neglect of the garden and lawns for giving the reptile shelter. Dasa defends himself by claiming he has been begging for a grass-cutter for months, which sparks a long, irrelevant debate about the wartime scarcity of iron and the black-market prices of tools. The college-going second son then announces that 30,000 people die of snakebite every year in India, one every twenty minutes, and the horrified mother again blames Dasa.

Clearing the garden and the beggar's prophecy

The sons arm themselves with bamboo sticks, knives and crowbars, force Dasa to join the hunt, and hack down the garden. Creepers, bushes and lawns are cut to the root until the yard is barren and the walls blaze in the sun, yet no snake is found, and Dasa asks triumphantly, 'Where is the snake?'

An old beggar woman arrives crying for alms and tells the mother they are fortunate, for the cobra is really God Subramanya visiting their home. The superstitious mother agrees, recalls she had forgotten a promised Abhishekam, rewards the beggar with a coin, and is promised a snake charmer. An old man soon arrives boasting of his mystical power, but when asked to catch the cobra he helplessly admits he can do nothing unless the snake is pointed out to him, and leaves his address before departing.

Dasa's deception and the final twist

At five in the evening the exhausted family rests on the veranda, discussing safety. Suddenly Dasa appears holding a water-pot sealed with a flat stone slab, claiming he has cleverly caught the cobra and even seen it peeping out. The mother compliments his sharpness and wishes she had offered the snake some milk. Dasa carefully carries the pot off to hand it to a snake charmer, instantly becoming the hero of the day.

But just five minutes after Dasa leaves, a real, massive cobra slowly emerges from a hole in the compound wall, glides toward the gate, pauses near the veranda to regard the family with its hood half-open, and crawls down a drain. The youngest son realises that Dasa tricked them with an empty pot to save his job, and the chilling truth dawns that the real snake was in their midst all along.