The Curse of the Damin on Battis Shirala Nag Panchami, a photo by firoze shakir photographerno1 on Flickr.
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This was shot may years back at Battis Shirala the Snake Town of Maharashtra once upon a time, the festival that bought hordes of foreigners to this sleepy town off Islampur near Ichalkaranji in Sangli district ..this feast during Nag Panchami was famous all over , I had come to shoot it without realizing the rituals of Snake puja had been banned.
I was lucky I got to shoot a few frames a few kilometers away from Battis Shiral in a village called Suryagaon..but folklore goes the Damin or rat snake was caught by unscrupulous poachers and placed as a trophy around necks of visiting tourists , the rat snake or Damin being a sensitive non poisonous snake died due to this horrible treatment..
Huge piles of dead Damin were thrown on the outskirts of the town and this came to the notice of the animal activists and the famous Battis Shirala snake festival came to a sudden end.
But the Snake puja in homes continue, cobras bought from the border areas of Karnataka and after the festival they are again set free , and some rituals never die can never die from the soul of Humanity.
And for shooting this event I owe my inspiration to a humble creative media photographer Nitin Sonawane of Times Group , it was his pictures at the PSI Gallery that made me dream snakes for several weks and after speaking to my Naga Sadhu Guru Shri Vijay Giri Maharaj of Junagadh I went and shot the same and I saw a cobra in my dream in my house a few minutes back that made me reminisce and add my thoughts on this blank post..
My right hand due to a Moharam sword injury , where I cut my tendon doing kama matam in Delhi, is now shaped like the hood of a Cobra .. it is permanently deformed and I type all my blogs one finger of this damaged hand.
If there is any festival I really miss shooting as a photographer it was the Snake Festival of Battis Shirala ..
