The App that Helps the Snake-Catcher of Thiruvananthapuram Save Both Snakes and Human Lives
On an uncomfortably hot evening in the middle of March this year, I walked down a deserted lane in Thiruvanthapuram, Kerala, to a thatched house. After being invited inside, I made myself comfortable on a sun-bleached chair. Underneath the chair on which I was seated, was a plastic jar containing a cluster of snake eggs. Seven such identical jars with red lids, each home to a hundred distorted snake eggs, were strewn across the 100 square feet that made up wildlife conservationist Vava Suresh’s living room. “Often after catching a female from the burrow, the eggs are left behind. On their own, these would perish so I bring them home. These would only hatch by mid-April, May,” he said reassuringly to me in Malayalam, as he tapped a giant jar next to him.
When he reached into his bag, I feared more eggs or worse, live snakes. Instead he dug out a soiled linen tote bag and from it a two-year old Android phone—which he still carries in the cardboard box it came in—to show me the administrator interface on the application called King Cobra.
The app allows him to trace the shortest distance between him and a snake-spotter by employing Google maps. Developed by Sparknova Technology, a company based in Thiruvananthapuram, and downloaded by over ten thousand users, it has helped this self-taught snake-catcher to plan his daily itinerary.
“On an average I get around 100 to 150 distress calls per day. Of these, around 50 calls are through the application whereas the rest are direct phone calls. A survey conducted in a local Malayalam newspaper said that over 35 lakh people have saved my number on their mobile phones making it one of the most common numbers in the state,” he told me. Apart from placing an urgent call, the app also allows the user to click a picture of the snake and send it to Suresh for an instant response to determine its nature. If it is venomous and Suresh decides to help a customer out, then the app gives him direction to the location while he kick starts his Honda Activa. A little green circle with his name stealthily meanders through the route on the map, enabling the customer to track Suresh’s journey. “This app has helped me, because earlier I couldn’t prioritise my calls. The picture helps in this process. For instance, if it’s a rat snake (non-venomous) then I can easily skip that one and travel to the next distress call,” he said.
I could hear a dog incessantly bark from his open kennel in the frontyard. Suresh occasionally raised his voice, but his charm did not quite seem to work with dogs. It was 8 pm, and he had just returned home after rescuing nine snakes from around three districts in Kerala. He told me that had caught 65 king cobras already this year, and in total, rescued 49,010 snakes that had strayed into homes, offices and backyards. “I also look at where the snake has been found to prioritise. First, I attend to the ones that have entered the house. If the snake is found across the field, or in a faraway yard, then I push those cases to the bottom. A lot of people these days also send me pictures and videos of snakes via Whatsapp. The phone keeps beeping through the night as well,” he said proudly.
A couple of months ago, Suresh received a call at 3 am from a man saying that a cobra had found its way into his house in Chenganoor near Alappuzah in Kerala. Half asleep, Suresh travelled 115 kilometres to realise that the address was fake, and so was the call. That particular late-night caller happened to be in Andhra Pradesh. It is to avoid this that the snakeapp has been connected to the Thiruvanthapuram police’s cyber cell. All the calls to his number are traced, and he receives an immediate notification on the location of the customer.
Forty-one-year-old Suresh is a snake conservationist first. Unlike most snake catchers, he doesn’t use a stick or hook; he simply approaches the hissing reptile barehanded. His only safety measure appears to be the countless black sacred threads looped around his neck. The house in which Suresh lived in as a child was surrounded by paddy fields, and snakes were a common sight. He was never scared of them and told me that knew he was different from most people around him in this regard. “I first caught a Cobra from a field when I was twelve and I hid it in my house to understand its temperament,” he said.
His tale took me back to my childhood, and a gory afternoon on which my uncle used his hockey stick to brutally beat a common krait to death. But this was fifteen years ago, before Suresh was a household name in Kerala. “People do it as a means of self defense, as a panic act. I just aim to spread awareness that they are potentially harmless unless provoked or exposed to chaotic circumstances,” said Suresh who releases the captured snakes and hatchlings into various forests in and around Thiruvanthapuram once every week.
He paused and stepped outside to answer a phone call. From where I was sitting in the living room, I could comprehend traces of the conversation and understood that the caller had been bitten by a snake. I could vividly hear Suresh ask questions to determine whether it could be lethal. He concluded that the bite was not poisonous and declared the pandemonium to be the reason behind the caller’s raised heartbeat and dizziness. In the one hour that I spent there, he answered four other phone calls; all from snake spotters who gave him descriptions over the phone.
A termite-eaten wooden shelf bursting with trophies commemorating his work occupied the entire expanse of the wall. The few that could fetch him some money got stolen last summer. He tried to be diplomatic but reverted to his sardonic self soon: “All the government funding that I ever received was one reimbursement for the bill from when I was in the ICU after a snake bite. Rs 36,000 to be precise.” His middle finger is amputated at its mid phalanx from a bite, and he pointed to seven other snake bites on his hands. He estimated that he has been bitten 286 times and been on the ventilator twice.
In November 2013 when England’s Prince Charles was in Kerala to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday he made it a point to meet the celebrated snake charmer. Even though Suresh doesn’t charge for his services, he is a home spun celebrity now with his own television show, Snakemaster, that is broadcast on a local channel, Kaumudi. A group of six who patiently waited through my interview with him began to click pictures once I started leaving.
As I was leaving and stood by the gate, he flung open the lid to the Honda Activa’s storage compartment near the footboard to show me his day’s work. I watched three snakes slither in a plastic bag. “Is there a Cobra?” I asked. Before I had time to process what was happening, we were walking down the lane into his relative’s property where he had temporarily sheltered some snakes. It was dark and there was no gate so I waited on the other side of the fence while he opened a yellow kennel the size of a crate. A strong smell first reached me, followed by resilient hissing. And in the dimness of a streetlight at the opposite end of the street, I watched a cobra slither out. “This is where you need to touch it,” he pointed to what looks like the forehead of the snake. He said that he does this to let the snake know that he means it no harm. I watched him demonstrate, and pick it up near its tail. The snake soared in the air hissing threateningly before being ushered back into its kennel.