In a stunning story of survival, a 2-year-old boy in India has killed a cobra with his bare teeth, after the snake wrapped itself around the boy’s tiny hand. The incident has drawn immediate comparison by the devout with “Kaliyadaman”, the mythological tale of the Hindu deity Krishna defeating the fearsome snake Kaliya when he was a child. Incidentally, the child’s name is “Govinda”, which is another name for Krishna.
Little Govinda and his family live in Bettiah, in the West Champaran district of the eastern Indian state of Bihar. On the day of the incident, Govinda was playing on his own, just outside the family home, when he saw the snake nearby.
The presence of snakes near human habitation is not all that surprising during the Indian monsoon, as the reptiles try to take shelter from heavy rains and flooding.
This snake was a cobra, one of the deadliest of snakes. Govinda, possibly quite unfamiliar with snakes because of his very young age, threw a small stone at the cobra. The snake retaliated by coiling itself around the boy’s hand.
What happened next has left everyone in a state of shock mixed with reverence. Instead of screaming in fear, the toddler bit down hard on the snake, exerting such force that the snake reportedly died right there.
A Times of India report quoted the child’s grandmother Mateshwari Devi as saying, “When we saw the snake in the child’s hand, everyone rushed towards him, but in the meantime, he already bit the snake, killing it on the spot.”
Of course, Govinda was bitten, too, and the cobra venom caused him to faint. His family took him immediately to the Government Medical College Hospital (GMCH), where a snake venom antidote was administered.
“Timely treatment saved Govinda’s life,” said doctors at GMCH, as quoted by The Times of India. Trauma to the snake’s head from Govinda’s bite appeared to have killed it, whereas the cobra venom had rendered the child unconscious, but the effect was not lethal, according to the medical assessment.
