It is a novel experience, traveling by horse drawn jatkas in Arni, followed up by a eight mile bullock cart – yes, we were on our way to a tiny village in North Arcot. Summer vacations brought excitement, stuff like this, unusual destinations and quaint modes of travel. And at six or seven, your mind’s eye soaks in the experience, etching memories indelibly into your system.

Calling on grandmother was an excuse, the real reason for taking the route was to enjoy the sojourn to and from the agrarian habitation a few miles off Kalavai.

Staying for a few nights in the mud-walled enclosure that passed off as home, eating mounds of rice and sambar (cry yourself in envy, DW-KK), all cooked over crackling firewood. Rubbing eyes, smarted into lacrimation by the smoke. Chewing lumps of crude jaggery, running and shooing cows as they returned from pasture – every experience was new and worth. Blowing puffs of air from juvenile lungs into a long metal pipe to stoke the dying embers of the grate to revive it back to a spluttering flame throwing out crackling sparks, was capital fun. For a schoolboy, this interlude, was the holiday highlight.

And grandma, she indulged us. Plying us with endless rounds of sweetened groundnut orbs, and puffed rice victuals. All was heaven on earth, till, stomach gripes and belly aches came calling. Contaminated water and unhygienic environs take their toll on those in pediatric age groups, and not surprisingly I doubled over with intestinal colic.

Castor oil is panacea. It is ambrosia, elixer and manna combined for all ailments, especially that of the gastrointestinal tract. Half an iron karandi (a large scoop) of the fetid emulsion is rammed down my infant pharynx, while I am pinned to the wall to negate resistance.

Castor oil chemistry catalyses peristalsis, and the resultant fillip to colic motility hastens bowel evacuation: that should by default, ease stomach gripes – so goes folk medicine logic. God have mercy! Castor oil sure does its job, not only effectively, but immediately too.

Now comes the conundrum. Most among us from urban environs know, hinterland rural India abodes have no toilets. The surrounding verdant green landscape is one unending open latrine. Take your pick of place, squat, wash, and be done with it. Simple, really, if you are a villager, schooled in ancestral techniques and mores. Despite being just seven, I decided to wait until dark to take my outing for the express purpose of evacuation. The mental blocks even young city bred kids develop, I suppose.

At stroke of sunset, I found myself walking into the twilight, wending my way through some shrubbery – a brass chembu (a narrow necked large-bottomed vessel) of water in hand. After making doubly sure, none was afoot, I squatted. Smack on a sharp stone. Then re-squat on safer ground. Not a second later, just as Venus came into my ken, a sharp nip stung my behind. In a trice, I scooted off, the half un-hitched half pants round my knees, and leaving the water lotta behind. Grandma,  graaand maaaa!!!

Pretty soon, under a kerosene lamp held aloft, my twin gluteii were examined and palapated by trained eyes and fingers.The whole damned population of North Arcot was there for the inspection.

Nalla pamba enna? Appadi thaan theriyudu amma. Says the middle aged man with a horizontal triple stripe of ash bedecking his forehead and an oily tuft riding his crown -

What???Am I hearing right? The vaidyar maama was suspecting a cobra bite?

In a few minutes, I was booing and sobbing loud, as I found myself on a bullock cart, which jingle jangled in a trot to Kalavai, the nearest medical outpost. A doctor there, had a look, peering at close focusing a torch beam on the fang targeted zone on my right gluteus maximus.

Ahem, paambu kadi illai saar. Just a thorn of the lantana. Mullu saar.

He deftly pulled out a small tip of an offending phytic material using a sharp forceps, which he held up for all to see. For good measure, and ten rupees more, rammed a syringe of tetanus toxoid into the un-targeted left half of my posterior.

I buttoned my half pants in a hurry, and said I had to go to the loo. Right away. Right now!  Remember, it was already an eternity since I last responded the urgent calls of nature. Shown the direction to a lean to, I raced in, and let loose. Forty eight hours of products of digestion, acted upon by a good ten cc of castor oil, does produce an enormous quantity of backlog.

It was nice to be back in a town, with habitable toilets. Although the tiny cubicle was dimly lit, and only by a single naked 15 watt electric bulb, the light from that source, was far more welcome to me at that critical juncture of my life, than the combined glows of Venus, Mars, and the Moon which illuminated the out-backs of North Arcot district.

After my ‘near-death duel with the cobra’, all further trips to the village stood proscribed for me. I was always left behind in Madras, while everyone else piled into buses and train compartments to savor jaggery peanut concoctions around a roaring grate. I sobbed at the injustice of it all, and to this day see red when I spot a brass lotta.