He looks the part, and plays it well too. Meet Snake Shyam, Mysore's celebrity serpent-catcher.
Often, people call his cell to report a snake under their bathroom stone slab or luxuriously curled under their jasmine bush or endlessly peeping through their tiled roof. And off Shyam goes in his newly acquired second-hand Omni. His snake-catching gear is as much a shock as his figure: an old badminton racquet minus the guts.
But he has perfected the technique over the past two decades. On reaching the spot, Shyam first asks for an old pillow cover, preferably with no holes. He clips the mouth of the cover to the rim of the racquet to take the shape of a large tea strainer. He then delicately holds the snake and allows it to coil inside the pillow cover. Once this is accomplished, he’s off again—in the direction of the Bandipur or Thitimatti forests, to release the snake in its natural habitat. A glowing sticker on his van reads: Snakes are not as poisonous as human beings.
Snake Shyam, originally M.S. Balasubramaniam, has become an integral part of the stimulus-response mechanism of snake-spotting in Mysore city. The moment someone sees a snake in their vicinity, Shyam’s cell invariably rings. "Earlier it used to be a pager and before the age of pagers, people used to reach me personally," says Shyam. He claims that he has safely transferred nearly 40,000 snakes back to the forests since his first catch in 1982—a 3.5-feet cobra. The register he has learnt to maintain over the last six years records 11,152 snakes. "That includes all the four varieties of venomous snakes—cobra, krate, russell’s viper and saw-scale viper," he says.
The ability to identify and name 28-30 local snake species with such exactitude is common sense for Shyam, who is by no means a trained herpetologist. Neither is he the unlettered naturalist, but a self-taught serpent scholar. He studied in the Kannada medium and passed a job-oriented industrial training course to be with a local factory for a while, before deciding to ferry children to school in an autorickshaw for his livelihood. That’s how he earns his bread, even now—just that his van has replaced the autorickshaw.
"I have studied the books of herpetologists like Romulus Whitaker and J.C. Daniel on snakes. In fact, Whitaker sir presented a copy of his book to me recently. I also interacted with the head of the biochemistry department at the Mysore University," he says proudly and begins to lecture on the haemotoxins of vipers and neurotoxins of cobras.Shyam is now involved in spreading ecological awareness. He also visits schools to speak to children about snakes and the importance of conserving nature. "I help them plant trees and tell them to thank mother nature before they go to bed each night. After all, we’re all her guests," he says.
How much does Snake Shyam charge to catch a snake? "Nothing," he says and follows with a fine logic: "The moment you expect money, people will start killing the snake. Why would they want to waste Rs 50 or 100 on Shyam? Therefore, I do free service. I can assure you, in the past decade nobody has killed a snake in Mysore because they know that Snake Shyam is around."
True, to a large extent. People have written down his cell number on the edges of calendars. So, if you’re in the neighbourhood and see something scaly, here’s his number for you: (0)94480-69399. And address: Snake Shyam, 259, 5A Main Brindavan Extension, Mysore 20.