The Festival of Serpents as a poem from Sarojini Naidu reminds us of Nag Panchami and Manasa Puja celebrated all over India in different forms. Where is it not worshipped and who does not? To read the poem is to be reminded of the Nagas, Nag Vamsas, Nag-Nagin stories, the Naga people, Naga Vamsas, the Vaastu stories, the Sheshnaga stories and the Aryan, non-Aryan myths? The poem brings to our light Bihula-Lakhinder story. The Austro-Asiatic beliefs and the Dravidian stuff? Nag Devata, why not to seek blessings from? The day is auspicious. The anointing of the Nagas is dreadful indeed. To offer prayers and to make an obeisance to the Nag Devata no doubt a tryst with the dreadful and a cleansing experience indeed in being face-to-face with which dread we most.

When we read the poem, the Kaliyadaman story of Krishna too flashes upon the mind’s plane. Icchadhari Nag-Nagin stories still do the rounds. It is really horrible to see snakes. Hair stands on the body.

Shining ones, addressing the snakes, the poetess seeks to awaken and arouse them with the dreamy realms of delving. After being refreshed with the image of them, she talks of the Nag Devata temples which may be under the rooted banyan trees, near the sandhills or into the caves. She prays to them to lift their heads and to be tuned to the charmers’ flutes.

The devotees are with milk, honey and so on to worship them and to offer to and to seek blessings for their sons and daughters. She invokes the spirit to be observant and guiding against something that may befall them.

Without the blessing of the Nag, how to live on? How helpless is our life? How patient the labours of ours? We human beings keep cherishing our dreams like the jewels in their crests. Our wishes are mundane and worldly but that of the Nag extraterrestrial. 

The myths of the Nag how to unravel them? How to relate to them? What is the element of the dreadful? How to think about the unthinkable? What will it strike us, how to say that?

Spread the hood to guard against some unwanted will or the untoward to take place. With the fasting lips, they pray to, with the fervent hearts they sing in praise of the Nag. Incense sticks burning are hallowing the atmosphere to make the occasion fragrant and holy. The poetess asks the Nag Devata to hear her prayer and to be compassionate to her innermost ones. It is but Divinity which keeps as well as destroys. We the human beings cannot exclude and eliminate the elements of awe and suspense from our lives. A prayer may eliminate terror and horror elements.

How to worship the Naga which is within us and around? This earth, this life is composed of different elements. The dreadful, how to confront it safely? 

Shining ones awake, we seek your chosen temples
In caves and sheltering sandhills and sacred banyan roots;
O lift your dreaming heads from their trance of ageless wisdom,
And weave your mystic measures to the melody of flutes.

We bring you milk and maize, wild figs and golden honey,
And kindle fragrant incense to hallow all the air, 
With fasting lips we pray, with fervent hearts we praise you, 
O bless our lowly offerings and hearken to our prayer.

Guard our helpless lives and guide our patient labours,
And cherish our dear vision like the jewels in your crests ; 
O spread your hooded watch for the safety of our slumbers, 
And soothe the troubled longings that clamour in our breasts.

Swift are ye as streams and soundless as the dewfall, 
Subtle as the lightning and splendid as the sun ; 
Seers are ye and symbols of the ancient silence, 
Where life and death and sorrow and ecstasy are one.

Whose representative are they she cannot tell that. Swift like the streams they seem to be, soundless like the dewfall, subtle as the lightning and splendid like the sun they seem to be. What are they none can say it. A dreadful dream, a nightmare, what are they? Maybe the seers, maybe the symbols of ancient silence where life, death, sorrow and ecstasy are one.

We generally like to prescribe Nissim Ezekiel’s Night of the Scorpion, but not the Festival of Serpents composed by Sarojini Naidu. But A.K. Ramanujan too talks of Nag Panchami in his poetry sanskaras and rituals. Such a thing it is in Karnad’s Nagamandala.