The Snake Inside

Chapter 5

Amar did not tell his parents about the unusual experience he had but he asked them to allow him to celebrate his inheritance by visiting the holy city of Benares one weekend. His parents agreed and let him go.

He packed up, got on a plane to Mumbai and left. He first contacted a local guide online, and the man met him at the airport and led him to the hotel.

Benares was wonderful. In the middle of the city flowed the sacred river Ganges, in which water bathed people in the hope of purification of sins and good health. Boats sailed along the river with tourists thrilled to see the city. Stairs descended from the sides of the river - ghats in many places to provide people with bathing and ceremony places, where cremation fires were burning of the deceased. Numerous temples were erected on both sides of the river.

"I want to visit Shesna's well," Amar told to the guide. "Do you know where it is?"

"Ah, the Shesna well," said the guide remarkably "there are not many who know where it is. It's some sort of well-kept secret in Benares. Even I don't know. But you're lucky. I know someone who can help you!"

And he took Amar to a slum in Benares, where poor people lived in the old city near the ghats. The slum was overpopulated and polluted. The houses were low, with old, worn-out clothes drying in front of them. Large groups of children of all ages, very poorly dressed, ran around the streets. The streets were dirty, full of waste of various kinds, and muddy, dirty water flowing along them.

In front of a public toilet with a broom in his hand, a short, old man was cleaning. The guide moved quickly along the narrow streets, and finally when he came by the man, he stopped.

"Kritin! I'm bringing you a customer!" he said to the scavenger.

The man with his broomstick raised his dejected eyes to Amar and looked at him with an extinct look.

"He wants you to take him to Shesna's well. He'll pay you well!"

"How much?" asked the man.

"Fifty rupees ... a hundred?"

"One hundred and thirteen? Agreed!" said Kritin quietly, left the broom aside, washed his hands and followed Amar and the guide. The three of them got out of the slum, caught a taxi and set off. Kritin instructed the driver, and soon they reached a hill surrounded by thick forest. At the foot of the hill there was a large, open pit.

"There, in that well ... They say that at the bottom is the entrance to the underground city of Patala," said Kritin, and his eyes went alive for the first time. "Ten meters below the surface of the water, there is a stone door on which snakes are engraved. That door leads to the underworld."

At that moment Amar realized Kritin was saying something very interesting and got out of the taxi to look around. He approached the well and peeked inside. The pit was about twenty square meters wide. From it descended about forty stairs to a recess where at the bottom was deep water.

Amar felt wonderful, thrilled and excited. He felt a desire to know more, to see more. He carefully went down the stairs to the well. Then he saw that down below, just beside the water, was sitting a magician, resting and playing to a snake cobra on the pungent instrument. The boy was amazed at the sight.

"It seems we will never know what's on the bottom of the well" Amar yelled to Kritin in response and continued saying to the magician: "Hey, this is a real snake! How did you tame it? But I know, you have extracted it's poisonous teeth!"

"You can never be sure of that," said the magician with a smirk.

"Oh, how you don't know!" said Amar. "It must be so. Here, even if I touch the snake nothing will happen to me. It's completely harmless! I can make shoes from her skin!" he joked.

And he suddenly stretched his hand. Everything happened in a moment. The cobra attacked, and in a second Amar curled up holding his hand.

"It bit me!" he sighed painfully. "How it hurts! Hurry! Call an ambulance!"

The guide who was descending the stairs saw what had happened. He quickly pulled out his cellphone and called for an ambulance. Amar sat on the steps next to the water and decided to wait for help.

He was sitting, but he began losing his vision. Time passed, and no one was coming. He realized that he had never been closer to death in his life, and that scared him.

In his fear, he felt the tension of power around him as in the moments of his Kundalini awakening. It seemed to him that the sun, high in the sky, darkened and the weather became very cold. Or hot? He felt alternating heat and cold in the spine.

- Lavantika ... help me, goddess - he prayed desperately.

"If you want to live, jump into the well," he heard a voice. He felt it more than he heard it.

The water in the well was deep, dark and gloomy, but Amar couldn't see a way out of the bad situation he was in. What would happen if he jumped? He might drown and died. But he would died if he stayed above because the venom of the snake acted quickly and he slowly but surely was losing his strength. Amar thought feverishly. Was there really an entrance to the underworld at the bottom of the well? He very, very much wanted to see that world! And then, in an ecstatic moment of religious rapture, Amar jumped into the well and sank like a stone at the bottom, losing consciousness.