He said: ‘Ok, here is a snake story for you.
Long long ago in a forest, a family of snakes lived in a hole under a big banyan tree. You know snakes lay many eggs and the father and mother snake had just had ten new children born to them.
The mother snake stayed inside the hole all the time to make sure that none of her children went out and got eaten up by some hungry animal or other.
The father snake went out looking for food and would be gone for long hours. He would catch something and bring it back for his family.
Small mice. Big frogs. Birds eggs. Large insects. Things that snakes eat you know. His family would eagerly await his arrival and the food he got would quickly finish.
As time went by the babies grew bigger and the mother snake found that her new set of children were extra naughty. All ten of them!
They did not listen to her when she asked them not to look out of the mouth of the hole. They did not listen to her when she asked them not to run around all over her and play when she was sleeping in the afternoon. They did not listen to her when she asked them not to fight amongst themselves all the time. They did not listen to her…
...and the mother snake kept on losing her temper and got so tired hissing at the children that she became thinner and thinner and more and more worried. This of course only made her sleep less and less which in turn made her more worried… And so on.
One day when father snake came back she told him that he had to find a solution to her problem. Father snake had been coming home everyday to a more irritated, more worried and a thinner mother snake. So he thought and thought and finally an idea came into his head.
He told the mother snake that whenever she felt herself beginning to lose her temper she should call her children around and tell a story.
It didn’t matter if she made up the story then and there or if it was a good story or a bad story. She just had to tell the first story that came into her head. The mother snake thought that a fine idea and started practicing it the very next day.
It worked!
Soon the mother snake became a very good story teller and everybody was happy. The children were happy because they got to hear so many stories. The mother snake was happy because her children became better behaved not only when the stories were being told but even in between stories. Father snake was happy because he had found a clever solution to a difficult problem and also because the mother snake was happy.
And that is the end of our story but not of the stories that mother snake must be telling her children even now...’
‘So’, said Naana, ‘the story went to Haripuram and we came…’
‘HOME’, shouted the children and soon were fast asleep.
(This story is illustrated by Upal Sengupta, former colleague, inspirational artist and lead singer of the famous Bengali rock band Chandrabindoo)
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