Like all animals and reptiles, snakes need caring too. Especially since they are the lifeline of our farmers and eat up the rats that eat up their crops. It’s for this reason that the snake is worshipped during Nag Panchami festival all over India and especially Maharashtra.
Millennium National School, Pune celebrated the Nag Panchami festival in the KG premises on 19th August, 2015 in great detail. We displayed a model of how Nag Panchami was celebrated traditionally in the olden days. Women kept fast and used to give milk to the Nag and did puja while the snake charmer played his “pungi”. Little girls put mehendi in their hands and played merrily on the swing and played “fugadi” with gay abandon.
However, in the modern days, Nag Panchami should be celebrated differently. Before the ‘Nag-Panchami’ for many days the snake charmer does not give any water to his snake. Because of this the snake drinks the milk which is offered on the day of ‘Nag-Panchami’ to satisfy its hunger and thirst. But if the milk is not digested, the snake dies. Thus by forcing snakes to drink the milk we are indirectly killing them on the day of ‘Nag-Panchami’. If we provide Pepsi or Coca-Cola for drinking, instead of milk, the snake will drink it. Women shouldn’t give milk to the snake because they don’t drink it. Instead, the milk should be given to the poor who need it more. The ultimate aim is to take care of the snake because they help our farmers.
No celebration is complete without story telling. The teacher told a Nag Panchami story to the kids and how it all started. There was a farmer who unknowingly killed the baby snakes in his field. The father snake in revenge found and killed the farmer’s wife and kids. Then the snake saw the farmer’s daughter worshipping a snake on Nag Panchami day. The snake realized that the farmer had killed unknowingly and that the snake had made a mistake. So in repentance, the snake reversed his action and took out the venom from the farmer’s wife and kids’ bodies. They came alive and from that day onwards, Nag Panchami is celebrated.
The ever active Millennium kids went on with the snake making activity to complete their involvement with the celebration. Nursery kids did ear bud spot printing of the snake with black and yellow water colour paint. Jr. KG kids sprinkled yellow and black semolina (rava) grains on fevicol and adorned the snake. Sr. KG kids made a snake from craft paper. Each kid was given four pieces of diamond-shaped chocolate brown craft paper that they stuck together at the corners with fevicol. They stuck the red forked tongue on the top. They drew eyes of the snake and scribbled all over with silver crayon. Each paper was folded and stuck until it looked and moved like a real slithery snake. Whatever the children made was distributed to them at the end of the day.
The Nag Panchami celebration was indeed an all-encompassing day of paying tribute to the snake for all that it does for mankind. We should continue to keep up this tradition and improvise on it further by taking very good care of the snake. It is our duty to take care of the snake because it helps our farmers.
