The snake that swallowed its own tail
Home How India is fighting the war it couldn't win — through prime-time soaps There is a scene in Naagin, Ekta Kapoor's supernatural extravaganza on Colors TV, that deserves to be taught in every school of geopolitics, public health policy, and — above all — screenwriting. A professor specialising in eschatological theory (think Professor Jiang from Predictive History, but with a Hindutva software update), having assembled India's finest sadhus, aghoris, and spiritual elders to address an impending pandemic, discovers that the usual method of summoning a divine serpent goddess isn't working. The snake charmers have tried their best. Nothing. Then — read slowly — the professor reaches into his pocket, produces a handful of Indian soil, and throws it into the air. Vande Mataram begins to play. The Naagin, a snake-human hybrid, appears. And here was I wondering — did the man have patriotic soil in his pocket the entire time? Like, just in case the science didn’t work?
Published: May 25, 2026 5:16 pm
Source: The Express Tribune — Read original