Happy World Snake Day, my relatives

India Today

16-07-2025

Slither in silence, strike without warning, and shed your skin when it suits you. These aren't classic traits of snakes, reptiles we celebrate every year on July 16, World Snake Day, but of our venomous kin. While the world applauds the role of snakes in the ecosystem, I'd like to extend an honourable mention to another species that's more venomous than snakes: relatives.advertisementIn the next few minutes, I will make a case as to why my relatives should be celebrated on World Snake Day too.Everything a snake can do, they can do better. With less hissing, more whispering.
Here, a word of caution is also needed: 75% of snake species in India are not venomous. World Snake Day is celebrated to spread information about snakes, which are an important part of the ecosystem, and to take out phobia and fear.Though most snakes are nonvenomous, they evoke fear. But relatives? Almost always emotionally venomous, pretending to be innocent.Snakes also need provocation to attack, but relatives don't wait.Relatives are silent and calculated, and strike while the irony is hot, and the receiver unsuspecting.I still remember I was all of 10 when I walked into a room by mistake and overheard a conversation about my complexion. No one paused or even flinched.No sudden movements. Just slow venom.It was a regular day for them. For me, it was the beginning of staring at mirrors for answers for many years to come.As you grow up, their fangs and venom change form. So do their attacks.It is no more direct or straight, but cautious and as stinging as ever.One Instagram-inspired outfit will earn you compliments at the moment, cousins grinning, and even aunties nodding approvingly like serpents basking in the warmth of your confidence.But hours later, the same aunties would slither over to your mother and hiss softly, "Acha hai... aap log rokte nahi ho kisi cheez se (Good, that you guys don't keep tabs on her)." A sentence so light it could pass for praise — but laced with just enough venom to trigger a full-blown panic in your parents' heads.Not because of what you wore, but because someone else noticed.And if clothes trigger quiet panic, try having an opinion.In real life, it starts small. You question a custom, challenge a sexist joke.The room stills — not in anger, but in calculation. That's when you know you've stepped where they didn't expect you to. Their tails. No bites though for now. Just a shift in air pressure, the coiling of discomfort around your ankles.advertisementOn family WhatsApp groups, it's subtler. You share an article or a post — carefully worded, not too radical. You post a story — a protest or even a romantic poem.The group doesn't reply. Not immediately. Then comes the emoji reaction. Then silence. And finally, a call from your parents.The snakes have struck, transmitting venom not through bite but via vial, to be injected by someone else.But if there's one topic that sends the snakes slithering out from behind potted plants of drawing rooms and polite smiles, it's shaadi (marriage).You could be writing columns, coding, travelling or spending some time attempting to be a better human being or even surviving capitalism with your spine (mostly) intact — but come one family dinner, all that dissolves into a single loaded question: "Job toh theek hai, par shaadi kab kar rahi ho? (Career is fine, but when are you getting married?)"If it's a pungi or been for snakes, it's the shehnai for our in-house snakes.I sometimes wonder, what will they ask if I do get married and then I look at my married cousins. The questions don't stop, they only double as the relatives double. Marriage is a way of inviting more snakes into your lives.advertisementMarriage, done. The goalpost doesn't shift. It's just that they multiply.To all my hissing relatives, I raise a toast on World Snake Day. It'll be cocktails and not milk. Go, hiss it to my parents!Snakes of the real world look so much tame to me now because my relatives have revealed to me that hissing isn't always loud, and venom doesn't need fangs. They have proved that you don't need scales for slithery movement, and that shedding skin is a lifestyle.Let the cobras keep the forests. You've got the drawing rooms covered. Let the vipers stay coiled in the wild. You've been circling me with shaadi discussions since I turned 23. Let the pythons stay in documentaries. You've already squeezed the life out of every achievement with your comparisons.Happy World Snake Day, my relatives.- Ends