Honestly speaking, I am not really a big fan of snakes. I just hate them. Just like the way I hate cats. For a reason unknown to me, the evil side takes the priority every time I see a cat or a snake, blood rushes in high speed, much like an adrenaline rush, which fills me with a want/desire (or you can call it a rage too) to cause harm to the cat or the snake. After a while when I actually think of that moment of sudden rage, I laugh at myself. I cannot recollect the exact incident that has filled me with this dislike towards snakes.
On the other hand, it is completely opposite. My dad, is curious about snakes, so much so that if there were any programmes in the television in either National Geographic or Discovery or Animal Planet (television channels), he would be glued to the screen. I guess the most knowledge that I possess about snakes is probably due to the unwilling viewership (if at all such a word exists) from me while he watched the programmes.
I will admit one thing though. There are few things that I did learn from the life of a snake. The most amazing part is that the nature has hidden the lessons that humans should learn and are often revealed only when the time is right. For instance, a kid in his fifth standard would not come across a mathematical problem of trigonometry, unless of course, he was Spock from the Star Trek era. Likewise, life as well. Only when you are ready to learn Trigonometry, you will be presented (not the gift kinda present, but the present kinda present) a plethora of problems in Trigonometry (Actually, trigonometry was my favorite part of mathematics, followed by Calculus and then Conics). All these years that I watched Snakes on those channels as mentioned earlier, never once did it occur to me as to how I could relate a part of its life cycle to mine, or generically speaking, to that of a human. I always thought about that aspect as interesting, at times, weird.
For instance, lets take venom of a snake. It is there in it, it is not killing it and yet, when released into another organism, that organism is killed. Much like the malice thoughts in our heart, when actually projected ends up ruining everything.
However, what most caught my interest was the way the snake sheds its skin. Before I reached this part of this post, I did quite some reading online to know the need for a snake to shed its skin. Of several aspects of the whole skin shedding process(this is commonly used phrase, which by the way should be called as Ecdysis) some things caught my utmost interest. Apparently. young snakes shed more frequently than older ones because growth is relatively rapid in the first few years of life. Healthy snakes usually have little or no difficulty with shedding and tend to shed their skins in one entire piece. The shedding process is preceded by a period of relative inactivity. A snake will shed its skin as long as it's growing, and snakes grow all through their lives. And soon after shedding is completed, snakes consume a lot of water.
While I continued to think, I realized something that never made sense before. Even in my life, for that matter, I think its common in most of our lives, I had shedding process too. Not the physical skin, but that of an emotional skin surrounding the soul. While I was in school, and thereafter in college, it was so easy for me to get over things, of course, there was a definite period of inactivity, but shedding that emotional skin was of utmost ease. As I began growing, that which I used to do frequently, and that which was done in bits and pieces, was now being done in an entire piece but the only thing that changed this time around was the level of difficulty.
We all shed, a lot. Some do it with ease some with lot of struggle, some with pain, and for some, shedding goes in vain. And soon after it is done, there is an unprecedented thirst, a need to quench it, a void to fill up, but what matters is that now, a new journey begins. Sooner or later, shedding is going to take place again.
One thing continues to exist, despite all the learning. I hate snakes.
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