Growing up near the foothills of the Eastern
Ghats, my childhood home was always surrounded by the feel of nature… the lush
green paddy fields, the dark jungle in the far distance and the rocky hills
that rose up behind the millet fields miles away.
It was probably the early 1990s and I was in high school.
On weekends, I’d normally take a Ruskin Bond
book up to the terrace overlooking my Grandmother’s flower courtyard and read
his Himalayan stories under the Jacaranda tree.
I also had a couple of school text books to
ease my conscience because I was supposed to be studying during the weekends.
But there was a reluctance to open textbooks
on a beautiful day filled with wispy clouds drifting across the sky.
And I’d usually end up listening to my
favorite hard rock on my Sharp Walkman with its X-bass and graphic equalizer
sliders, which I loved for the deep sound, close my eyes and wander into an imaginary
world…
Sometimes, I wondered about the lives of
the secretive animals that lived within those ancient forests of the Eastern
ghats.
The music provided a mental soundtrack for
the scenes that went through my mind.
I’d imagine the tread of the majestic
Bengal tiger that stalked stealthily through the shadowy glades in search of
prey. Its big furry paws. The eyes that glow like bright lanterns in the dark.
The beautiful pattern of stripes and its lovely fur.
Sometimes, unpleasant images would intrude
as I thought of the dark forest glades. That creature of nightmares, the king
cobra, as it silently slithered its scary fifteen-foot length through the dark forests
in search of other cobras to eat. But I never liked cold-blooded creeping
reptiles.
I mentally rejected it immediately and went
back to the gorgeous big cats, the trees, the wind, the beauty of the hills.
The hidden ambush of the powerful leopard,
one of the stealthiest and strongest apex predators as it waited, camouflaged
behind the innocuous green leaves that danced in the monsoon winds dripping
with rain...
It was peaceful up there under the Jacaranda,
petting one of my tabby cats that had spread out across my lap while thinking
of the gorgeous tigers deep in those hilly jungles.
But on that particular day, my Grandmother
was supervising the gardening around the chapel, which was a few hundred meters
away from the main house with a thick coconut grove and guava plantation in
between. She called to me to join her as she left and I put away my books and
music.
I didn’t know that I was leaving behind the
safety of my dramatic jungle daydreaming under the Jacaranda tree for the
actual danger that awaited me in the plantation behind my house.
Silent
peril in the peaceful coconut grove
On that eventful day, I decided to take a
shortcut down a water channel that ran through the coconut and guava grove, instead
of the main cleared path that my Grandmother took.
It was a concrete channel supported by a
foundation of small and uneven rocks that had been piled up and roughly
mortared together. It ran from the house up to the chapel. On one side of it,
there was the grove filled with neat rows of trees, while the other side was
covered with a dense border of culinary leaves and herbs which separated the
edge of my grandparent’s land from the highway on the other side.
Rows of tall coconut palms
This channel was used to pump water to the trees
every morning and evening. The early morning watering had already been done and
it had dried up in the mid-morning heat with small puddles of water here and
there as I splashed through them. I was wearing a pair of red ballet flats with
hard soles. And maybe that was one of the things that saved my life that day.
Two other kids were following behind me as
I led the way down the concrete channel completely unaware of the peril that
lay in wait.
I never saw it lying there.
I don’t even know how it happened. I don’t
remember if the ground felt uneven beneath my feet or if there was any sound or
texture that accompanied that moment in time. The channel was strewn with bits of leaves and twigs anyway so nothing felt out of the ordinary.
I don’t recall the exact moment I stepped
on the Russell’s Viper that lay coiled in the middle of that water channel.
There was nothing out of the ordinary until
someone screamed behind me.
The sound cut through the quiet morning and
the gentle swish of the wind blowing through the coconut fronds overhead.
The kids who had been walking behind me were
pointing at the ground and yelling.
I turned and saw a sickening sight.
A writhing snake covered with shiny scales. Its
head was completely crushed and its body was twisting grotesquely in the throes
of its death. It was probably about 1.5 - 2 feet long.
I lifted my feet and checked the underside
of the soles and found a disgusting patch of slime and mess under a one and a
half square inch of heel.
I felt a creeped-out feeling of utter
repulsion and disgust. One of the kids following me had also stepped on a bit of the crushed head after me. My grandmother told both of us to wash the slime off the shoes at a tap near the
chapel.
I guess the significance of it didn’t
really sink in at that moment.
Years later, I came to understand these
facts.
The Russell’s Viper is one of the most
deadly, dangerous and venomous snakes in the world because it’s responsible for
a high number of human fatalities, almost more than any other type. It belongs
to the notorious “Big Four” group of snakes (Cobra, Russell’s Viper, Krait and
the Saw-Scaled Viper) in South Asia that cause the most human deaths.
In the local Tamil language, it’s called a Kannadi Viriyan because of its pattern
of scales that look like shiny oval mirrors or glass. Some call it a Ratha Viriyan or Blood Viper because of
what its venom does to the victim. It’s also called "eight-step
viper", which stems from an old folk lore story (not accurate but
that’s the local reputation if somewhat exaggerated) that a person bitten by it
could only take eight steps before collapsing.
My grandmother was so shocked that she
looked at me as if I had walked straight through the valley of death and
emerged unscathed.
She quoted the verse from Psalm 91 about how God protects his people even if they step on serpents and keep them unharmed.
I’ve wondered about this for years. My
conscious mind did not see the snake or register the danger. This particular
variety is known for a lightning fast strike but... it could not strike.
And how did that highly accurate step exactly
on the snake’s head happen? What if I had stepped an inch to the right or left?
That’s the strangest thing about the whole
encounter. I don’t think it was blind luck.
The statistical improbability of that exact step blows my mind. I do believe that it was God’s
protection. It had been a literal serpent crushing moment. My guardian angel had been working hard.
Unexpected
danger in the fragrant courtyard garden
But that was not the only time I
encountered snakes in my childhood. I’m not sure if this incident happened
earlier or later than the other. Perhaps it was a few years later when I was in my teens.
My grandparents would always warn me and
others to stamp hard on the ground while walking through grass or areas covered
with plants. This would create ground vibrations that the snakes could feel so
that they would have warning and slither away from any approaching humans.
But this encounter happened right outside
the door.
My Grandmother had planted an inner courtyard filled with climbing
red button roses, pink and white roses in pots, and different varieties of jasmine
and lilies. It was a bit like an enclosed Mediterranean-style courtyard.
Sometimes, in the evenings, I'd lean over the thick climbing vines of Star Jasmine and pale yellow Tonkinese creeper, that grew over the dark green iron grill work railing on the outdoor staircase, to pick the aromatic flowers.
Climbing vines of Star Jasmine
That night, the air was heavily fragrant with the scent
of lilies, tuberose, the night-flowering coral jasmine and Spanish jasmine.
The house was built in a U-shape enclosing
this courtyard while the front faced a driveway bordered by bamboo and
bougainvillea.
The fourth side of this courtyard was
bordered by a water trough that fed the channel to the trees. A patch of Arabian Jasmine grew inside the inner wall. The coconut grove
lay behind it. And there was an open staircase leading up to my room.
One night, the sky over the open courtyard
was filled with bright stars. I looked up at the heavens with a sense of poetry
as I came down the stairs from my room upstairs humming a song.
I'd been listening to hard rock on the Panasonic music system with the big detachable speakers that my Grandfather had given me for my 15th birthday.
A faint night breeze blew the heavy
fragrance of the jasmine from its trellis and everything seemed as it
should be.
It was then that I heard a sound that
instantly set my senses on alert.
It was around 9 or 10 PM, the place was
dark except for two incandescent light bulbs on either side of the courtyard and whatever it was
that I had heard didn’t belong in that place at that time of night.
It sounded like someone was letting the air
out of a tire. It was the sound of a high-pressure release of air. And I
immediately thought of my own bicycle because as a kid, I'd sometimes enjoyed pushing the
pin to deflate it just to hear the sound and pump it up with air again.
But I had put my bicycle away in the shed
which was nowhere near the courtyard.
Who was letting air out of a tire at night?
There was no one around.
At one side of the courtyard, my
grandparents had a raised granite stone flower bed filled with white and yellow
thunder lilies. They are called rain or thunder lilies because they tend to
blossom whenever there is a thunderstorm.
Maybe that was symbolic. Who knows?
My little calico cat Spidey was sitting beside
the thunder lilies completely absorbed in something that looked like a dark
coil on the concrete plastered ground. And I realized that the sound came from
that round shadowed object.
I saw it but didn’t know what it was. I wondered if it was a scorpion but that didn’t
account for the sound. I wondered briefly if it was a snake but the shape didn't resemble one. And the sound was so loud. Could a snake make such a loud sound? I wasn't sure especially in the shadowy amber-lit courtyard.
I called out to Spidey but she wouldn’t
leave it. My grandfather’s room was at the corner of the courtyard at the ground level below my room upstairs. He
always kept a couple of long bamboo poles right outside his door. He had lived
many years in this region and knew what to expect.
I picked up one and tapped the ground on
the other side away from Spidey so she could move away but she wouldn’t go. She
was fascinated with that coil of whatever it was.
I could see my grandfather reading at his desk through the
window that opened into the courtyard. I called to him and told him that there was something on
the floor that sounded like an air vent.
He was a veteran at handling snakes and
other wildlife and immediately recognized the sound as soon as I pointed it out.
I sensed the tension in him as he picked up
a powerful torch he had on his desk, told me to stand on the steps well away
from it and direct the beam at the coiled sound.
Under the bright beam, I could see that it
was a snake all coiled up with its head sticking out towards my cat who had
been trying to pat it.
Swiftly, he picked up the other bamboo
pole. I went forward to push Spidey out of harm’s way but he urgently shouted
that I should go back up the stairs and hold the light.
He used the long pole to sweep Spidey out of the
way and unleash blows on the hissing coil.
It erupted immediately revealing itself as a
viper. It uncoiled, trying to jump and land a lethal bite. It thrashed around violently as he hit it.
My heart was beating so hard as I grabbed
Spidey. She was trembling with fear and had realized by now that she should
stay away from this creature.
The hissing finally stopped and my
grandfather prodded it with the pole to make sure he had ended the threat to our lives. I watched him
examining it to make sure that it could not do any harm.
After a while, he picked it up with the
pole and threw it over the low wall into the coconut grove, which was probably
where it had come from.
My Grandfather taught me independence and self-resilience.
The rules of life out there were simple.
You had to handle any threat that arose yourself. No one was coming to help you. There
was no time to think of alternatives. One had to act instantly. There
was nothing like emergency services or a Forestry department that would respond to your call back then. The hospital was almost an hour's drive away and my grandfather was the only one who could drive if anything happened.
In a situation that
demanded immediate action or the possibility of death, everything was
stripped down to black and white. There was no room for shades of grey.
I did wonder why he didn't own a rifle too like his father-in-law. But the rules changed with time and firearms were banned unlike in the colonial days of my great grandfather. And a bamboo pole was probably more suitable for venomous snakes on concrete because it didn't come with the danger of a ricocheting bullet.
Evening
walks in the fields
My grandfather had retired from his
position as the Director of an agricultural institute and he bought a few acres
of land. Both my grandparents enjoyed planting trees and crops all over the
land. We even had some livestock. Chickens, a rather clueless goat, rabbits and
other animals.
One year, my grandfather decided to grow
lentils on a few acres. The tractors had dug up the soil earlier that day before
the sowing.
I was walking around with a basket picking up pretty stones for my
crafts projects. I found a shiny white stone with flecks of silver and thin red
veins running through it.
Happy with the find, I climbed up on to a large
granite rock beside my grandfather who was sitting there overseeing the field
work when I saw a strange sight.
The heroic warrior of the fields
It was a little grey animal which looked
rather like an oversized squirrel. It had a bushy tail and I recalled that I
had seen a similar one a couple of years ago at a mango grove.
It was a mongoose with a furry tail. But something
was unusual about the scene. The mongoose had thick coils of something wrapped
around its midsection. The mongoose was fiercely fighting the creature.
His movements were so quick. As I watched,
my grandfather followed the direction of my gaze.
“That’s a cobra,” he said as he recognized
the colors and pattern of the snake that had coiled itself around the mongoose.
People in that region usually killed cobras
by breaking their spines because it was difficult to hit the flexible head once
it opened its hood and began its creepy dance.
I felt a stab of fear for the mongoose. He
was so small, cute and furry. How could he handle that predatory cobra?
But I soon saw that the little warrior was
winning the battle. He was so bold. So fierce. So quick.
The movements of the two creatures in a life and death struggle were too fast for the eye to follow as they thrashed violently in the middle of a plowed furrow.
Within minutes, the mongoose had established a
decisive victory. He bit the creature through the neck and paralyzed it.
The mongoose then grabbed the dead cobra in
his mouth and carried it off victoriously.
My grandfather informed me that mongooses
hunt snakes when he saw my surprise.
I watched with awe and admiration as the tiny
furry victor dragged his evening meal away to his burrow. He was keeping the
world safe in his own way.
What a brave little hero he was!
I’ve always admired mongooses ever since
that day when I witnessed the battle.
In
the city too…
I thought those encounters would end when I
left the small town for a crowded city for work, but that was not to be.
Many years later, I was living in a crowded big city while working for IBM. It was a rental on the ground floor and my cat
Biscuitus (who was a kitten then) seemed to be engrossed with something under
the bookshelf.
I was lying on the sofa beside the
bookshelf reading but my cat’s behavior warned me that something was not right.
He was trembling but wouldn’t move from that spot. He was clearly afraid. I
pulled him away, knelt by the bookshelf and shone a flashlight under it.
All I could see was something that looked
like a slanted stick and a sound of something hitting the wooden bookshelf.
It had to be a snake but… how could there
be one in a busy neighborhood like this? Didn’t they belong in the jungle?
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have my
grandfather’s skills and prowess with wildlife.
Fortunately, there were some construction
workers on the street outside and they came in, and used a broom to drag it
out. The uninvited visitor turned out to be a small juvenile cobra of less than 2 feet long with its
hood flared. I held Biscuitus and watched with horror as the men pushed it into
a paper bag and carried it away.
Biscuitus had warned me of the danger and
saved us both.
This was my third encounter with a cobra with its hood open. The other two had been adult cobras of about 4-5 feet long in my Grandparents' place. Such encounters were expected there in the open paddy fields and tree plantations.
But it was a shocking moment to realize that
venomous snakes could prowl even busy residential streets in a crowded city with a high population density. There was a small
patch of vegetation with a banana tree in the front yard of a house next door
and the landlady said that she had seen a cobra in it where it had probably hatched its eggs.
Strangely enough, she was superstitious
about the whole thing. Apparently, she believed that it was good luck to be
visited by a cobra. And then another neighbor joined in and told a tall tale
about how she had seen two cobras mating by moonlight and how it had frightened
her. She had a strong belief that she would be struck with blindness for watching a scene
like that.
I wanted to tell her that her eyesight was
working perfectly well. And also, that it was impossible to witness a scene like that under dim moonlight.
And that I’d rather have a mongoose visit
me. After all, doesn’t a mongoose make more logical and practical sense because it can kill
snakes that are dangerous to humans?
Would the landlady have welcomed the snake into her living room if it had shown up there?
What is lucky about a dangerous snake coming into your safe space? I couldn't see the logic or reasoning in their statements.
For a moment, I wondered if they were serious. But I quickly realized that they really believed in myths like that because they had grown up in a culture where no one was allowed to question established belief systems.
Their upbringing and social lives had revolved only around their immediate circles of people with similar ways of thinking and no opportunity to be exposed to other ways of life. They'd grown up in a culture which provided no space to think objectively or consider different points of view.
They had never been encouraged to question the established norms. And they continued to repeat their childhood teachings and cultural conditioning with the authority of an established belief. Even if it meant refusing to acknowledge the real danger to human lives.
Maybe it was a comforting coping mechanism to consider it good luck instead of acknowledging how close they had come to death.
So, I smiled and said nothing. I kept my thoughts to myself because it would have been futile to tell them otherwise. My
grandfather with his actual lifetime experience around such things would have been amused at their ways of viewing the
world. He would have shaken his head over their talk. But he would have actually handled the real threat.
Different world views
Most people don't question or examine their underlying belief systems. Questioning
authority in certain cultures is viewed with suspicion and the usual shut down response. "That's the way it is. Don't ask why. Don't question it. This is how we
are. Fall in line and conform."
But isn't a belief system more believable and credible only when it can stand up to questioning?
Sometimes, even educated people carry these old-school beliefs despite changing conditions. Even
my own grandmother who was an educated high school teacher had her little
quirks. But her occasional antiquated thinking didn't promote dangerous beliefs or anything irrational.
She had this weird belief that one should not cut fingernails
after sunset because "it's not good to do that". Maybe this made sense in the days before electricity and
nail cutters, when it would get dark after dusk and they used scissors or
sharp objects to trim fingernails. This may have been the case in the
early 1900's of her childhood. Maybe this was what her mother taught
her.
As a kid, I
always had a compulsion to ask "Why?" when something didn't make sense and sometimes her answer was "That's the
way it is", which left me with this unsettled sense of an unsatisfactorily answered question. I argued with her "That's the way it is" responses because I needed a reason to support its existence. She would regard my constant "Why's" with amusement and call me an affectionate nickname but never got annoyed.
My grandfather usually answered my "Why" questions with more satisfactory explanations and reasonable answers that made sense. But both gave me the space to question, wonder and explore as a child and never suppressed or shut me down for which I am deeply grateful.
Looking back on this childhood phase as an adult, I realize that this style of upbringing that encourages active questioning and individual expression was a rare psychological luxury that most kids don't get in a traditional society. Most are crushed by dogmatic systems that force them to fall in line even if these very systems lack the foundation that can stand up to logical scrutiny.
My logical, non-conformist grandfather used to get into lively debates with my grandmother whenever she came up with one of her archaic but harmless statements. It was usually playful banter and there would be a lot of back and forth teasing. Sometimes, they'd simply agree to disagree.
But she had a strong independent streak that complemented his individualistic personality well. She was educated, well-read, a career woman and a financially independent one even back in the early 1900's, which wasn't common then.
At a time when women were brought up solely to be home makers, she actually stepped up when her father died at the age of seventeen, gave up her father's plan to become a doctor, trained to become a teacher and took care of her mother and younger siblings.
She refused to put up with the typical societal BS or individual suppression that her older relatives and extended family propagated, and used to try to control, manipulate and dominate her in the name of tradition. But that's a whole story by itself and an interesting one so I will save that for another blog post.
Just like her father, and my great grandfather, the leopard fighting headmaster, she had absolute main character energy too. I guess her father taught her the strength to stand up against control attempts and not bow down to the dictates of her tyrannical extended family.
The story of her younger days and her early struggles ultimately shaped the wise, grounded and compassionate family anchor she eventually became. It was the same with my grandfather. Both struggled, grew up and grew wiser. They were the embodiment of ultimate matriarch and patriarch energy.
They were best friends who rarely argued except in that gentle, playful manner. Perhaps life had taught them to be balanced and grounded by the time I knew them. I miss them both.
I feel this great compulsion to write their stories now.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
But I've gone off on another tangent...
I was thinking of the story of Rikki Tikki
Tavi by Rudyard Kipling.
I've loved this story for years.
This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought
single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee
cantonment. Darzee, the Tailorbird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the muskrat,
who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by
the wall, gave him advice, but Rikki-tikki did the real fighting.
He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but
quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his
restless nose were pink. He could scratch himself anywhere he pleased with any
leg, front or back, that he chose to use. He could fluff up his tail till it looked
like a bottle brush, and his war cry as he scuttled through the long grass was:
“Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!”
Venomous snakes like the "big four" are a hazard for people and their numbers multiply and pose a very real danger to people when there are no restraints. Natural biological predators like the mongoose keep their numbers down and people safe.
But unfortunately, people hunt that brave little warrior for its fur, to make things like paint brushes for artists. Even today, a search on youtube for "mongoose paint brushes" brings up channels that praise these for better painting technique.
It makes me sad to see YouTube channels for artists promoting mongoose hair brushes. Encouraging
that market makes the world a
more cruel and dangerous place. Mongooses are captured and brutally
killed for their fur. For artists, do check that the label on
your brushes says "100% synthetic".
If you buy a brush that says "pure
mongoose" or "natural mongoose," you will be responsible
for creating the market that kills these brave little heroes of the world.
I do wish people would show more common
sense and kindness and actively refuse to buy anything made with mongoose fur
like paint brushes or other commercial products.
Guinea fowl alarms
Ever since those snake encounters, I don’t even like
to recall it. Even now, I don’t really want to dig up these old stories out of
the vault of icky memories. It comes with a sense of innate repulsion. But I’ve
been thinking about this topic recently because we’re planning to move to a
small town and a residential neighborhood that has had several snake sightings.
I’ve been researching methods to minimize
the danger of any ever coming into my house. The best advice seems to be to
create a barricade that they cannot scale like smooth compound walls, mesh
fencing and gates with no space for them to crawl through.
I’ve also considered the idea of keeping a
flock of guinea fowl in the yard. They operate as a kind of alarm system and
set up a loud squawking if they see a snake and that alerts people. They also clean up the yard by eating all the insects that snakes typically come after.
But apparently,
they are effective only in the daytime and must be protected in a coop after dark as they
cannot see. And I have never done any kind of poultry rearing and that would be
something new to learn. It could be fun.
I wonder what Biscuitus would think if we
did keep guinea fowl in the area around the house. He would probably enjoy the mental
stimulation and company of some strange new feathered friends.
Awww, I’d love a Rikki Tikki Tavi...
But realistically, in 2026, one
cannot keep mongooses as pets because poachers still hunt them for their fur. And so, the government banned anyone from
keeping mongooses. Also, they aren’t easy pets like cats or dogs.
And
back to the writing life…
It was easy to write these 4000+ words
today because it came from real-life memories.
The takeaway from all these old stories? Looking back and processing it all made me realize that my real life experiences actually turned into a highly illustrative and creative tool kit.
Reliving and writing them out is a good exercise
because the past turns into an accessible reservoir of old memories and
provides inspiration to create new scenes.
I plan to repurpose some of these old
memories and change the context and setting for my stories.
The symbolism found in these encounters translates well into world-building for fiction. For instance, the contrast
between the fragrant, flowered courtyard and the venomous, hissing snake that entered this sanctuary is
rife with meaning. Literally like the snake in the Garden of Eden where even a peaceful paradise can hold danger.
The archetypes that stand out from these animal and reptile encounters also serve exceptionally
well to craft realistic human characters.
The Mask of the Predator
Perhaps the worst characteristics in humans
are the need to control, manipulate or dominate others.
Some do this by deliberate
posturing and performance. They go the extra mile to convince others
that they are good, powerful and on the right side. But the excessive effort to
create and maintain this image reveals that they recognize its usefulness as
camouflage. And whenever there's a carefully maintained external front, there’s
usually a much less benign motive hiding behind it.
Politicians do it all the time. Religious
leaders do it. And yes, even family members do it. They are actively practicing that
very reptilian coldness and manipulation of distorting the reality of their
victims to suit their agenda.
They adopt the psychological authority and outer mask of being the "good citizen leader", "the saint who can do no wrong", "the family member who counsels you for your own good" or some kind of "holy cow" image that's beyond reproach and serves as a shield from suspicion or questioning.
But no matter how much a person shows off a "good" or impressive public image, it’s the actions that speak louder than words. One must wait to see the true colors emerge in the rare moments when the mask slips.
The ones whose actions are truly
trustworthy don’t put so much energy into this show.
Symbolically, does this match the nature of cold blooded
reptiles and their deliberate or stealthy methods of manipulation much like the
cobra’s creepy hood movements? Do they practice calculated deception to lie and manipulate with the flat,
expressionless gaze of reptiles?
There was a famous terrorist who had the calm and wise eyes of a saint but was responsible for planning mass killings. His followers must have trusted that calm persuasive manner. We tend to think only terrorists are dangerous to the world.
In reality, it's not just terrorists who deliberately use manipulation to exert control over others. CEOs of big companies and charismatic leaders of organizations score high on psychopathic traits. This FBI profiling article on the "Knight in Shining Armor" elaborates on the predatory mask of a character who is actually a corporate psychopath.
A literary villain who carefully performs
goodness as a form of predatory camouflage is far more sinister than an overt
one.
Translating these traits into fiction
makes for chilling villains, gullible innocents and believable characters.
The Strategy of the Warrior Mongoose
And then there are the heroes and sages of the animal world. Drawing on the inborn traits and characteristics
of animals can colorfully illustrate fictional characters.
The brave mongoose is a small but fast and intelligent animal
with its natural instinct to disarm venomous snakes. The little fighter looks past the dancing,
attention-grabbing head of a cobra. Instead, it bites it on the back of its head or neck to instantly paralyze it.
Narcissistic or manipulative people love
creating a creepy dance of drama, gaslighting, and confusion to keep their
victims off-balance. There's usually a lot of "goodness" performance or virtue signalling.
The mongoose-inspired character doesn’t engage with the distraction. The mongoose isn't taken in by the cobra’s theatrics, deliberate
posturing and attempts to distract it. It is perceptive enough to see right through the drama,
identify the core truth hiding behind it and goes straight for the spine to utterly
disarm the manipulator's power.
The Wisdom of a Cat
The cat is the ultimate master of the art of polite distance. They have this sage-like characteristic and stay quiet and still as they observe and discern the motives of those around them. Every single cat I ever encountered displayed this behavior 😼
Cats are innately independent,
curious, and observant yet detached. Cats are also quite selective. They offer
their affection only to those who have earned their trust through actions unlike dogs that are more
openly affectionate with an “innocent until proven guilty” generosity. Perhaps cats are wiser than dogs that are more easily victimized.
If you are friendly to a dog, it will usually approach you immediately with a wagging tail and reciprocal friendliness. A cat, on the other hand, will observe you for a while and watch your body language and actions before it decides that you can be trusted.
The Character's Inner Journey
From
a story perspective, or even in real life, do most characters go through this dog to cat
progression? This journey of growth from trusting innocence, to experiencing the fire of betrayal
and
learning the wisdom of distance and observation before generously bestowing trust.
Sometimes, staying indifferent, distant and
detached from the drama of a toxic person is the ultimate shield against the
power of the manipulators who seek to control, manipulate or dominate others.
But one must remember that all these traits exist on a spectrum in human as well as animal characters. A psychopath is not running on all 100% of the traits all the time. It could be just 30%. Maybe some have more self-control and less likely to act on it. A person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder is capable of showing charm and friendliness interspersed with moments of malignant abuse, which is what creates a trauma bond. And it is also what makes it so hard to clearly identify because a villain is supposed to be evil all the time. What if they show some good traits or are even nice some of the time? What if they steal something of great value but give you little gifts in its place? It's never 100% black or white. They occur in shades of grey. These nuances are worth exploring from a literary perspective.
A cat may only be 20% detached and 80% friendly like my sociable Biscuitus. He generally doesn't like to be picked up and carried. He will kick me after a few minutes of being carried around unless I offer him some sight seeing of places he can't reach, like high shelves 😻 But when he's in the mood for some loving, he'll demand to be petted persistently.
Dog personalities vary across breeds. German Shepherds and Border Collies are highly intelligent, loyal and definitely will not make friends with someone who breaks into your house like a Golden Retriever might 😅
I've often thought about this noticeable difference between cats and dogs. Is it because dogs are physically bigger and stronger while cats are small and unable to defend themselves against a bigger antagonist? I've always wondered why small dogs tend to be cranky while big dogs are gentle, protective and loyal.
When I was a teen, my grandfather got me a German Shepherd named Mandy. She was a lovely friend and companion with a gentle nature but was also fiercely protective, loyal and vigilant where outsiders were concerned. My aunt's pampered Pomeranian, Snoopy, on the other hand, used to bark at anything that annoyed him. Now I want to write their stories 😄
