The Atma Jyoti Blog

The sad story
of a pet cobra named “Shesha”

[This is a "best of" article, originally posted at the beginning of the year when blog readership was low. We repeat the posting now to share it with new readers.]

During our recent trips to India, we relayed interesting incidents from our travels back to the ashram by way of email. Here is one of the more remarkable stories. The monk in India who relayed these incidents to us was a man of impeccable honesty, as well as a fascinating story teller.

“We met a sadhu at whose house we had satsang and lunch. We privately call him “Cobra Swami,” although he’s not at all the type of sadhu that comes to mind when you hear such a title. I wouldn’t consider him a saint, but he obviously has some some special abilities, in particular the ability to sense and communicate with snakes, which is a very practical siddhi (power) in this area. The Tiruvannamalai area, at least outside the city, is well populated by cobras of a variety of colors and sizes. He said that cobras are the friends of sadhus, and he can sense when they are around and gets along quite well with them.

He told us about a time when he and two other sadhus were standing outside having a conversation and a cobra came up, rose up and turned its head from speaker to speaker as the conversation continued. At the end of their conversation they all slowly backed away, and Swamiji told the cobra he could go away now, which he politely did.

Shesha 

In his grandmother’s house there was a cobra that became very friendly with the family, whom she named Shesha, a name which he would respond to when called. He became one of the family pets; their dog even drank out of the same bowl of milk as Shesha, at the same time. Shesha was completely comfortable with them. One morning when they woke up they found his shed skin on the floor between them, meaning he was lying there between them as they slept.

The end of his story is sad. Grandma wanted to give a special birthday celebration for the cobra, so she arranged special food and even invited some guests. She told Shesha to hide himself, as he usually did when guests came over. Unfortunately he chose to hide near an underground pot, in which water was later heated. They smelled a strange burning odor at the time but did not connect it to him. After some days of his unexplained absence, Grandma had a dream of Shesha in flames, and she understood that burning smell had been him. In remorse she made the vow that in each generation of her family there would be one child named Shesha.”

Read more stories from Monks Letters.