102. The Sage and the Snake

A wandering sage comes to a village near a large tree where a cobra makes its home. On arriving, he discovers that the villagers are terrorized by this cobra, which bites anyone who passes unprovoked and has venom strong enough to fell the burliest of people. Agreeing to help, the sage seeks out the cobra, villagers in tow. The cobra hisses at their approach, and the villagers take to their heels, but the sage stands his ground. Confused, the cobra falls silent. "Come, let us talk, O handsome creature," the sage says. Having never been spoken to so kindly, the cobra comes to the sage's feet. "Why do you speak to me so gently, knowing my venom?" it asks. "Why do you act so evilly in biting the innocent?" the sage replies. "You are a glorious creature, but you are pointlessly killing humans you have no intention of eating. You must not enjoy such violence, or violence will get you one day." The cobra bows to the sage and promises to become his devotee and to never bite a human again. And so the sage goes on his way.

Within the week, he returns and finds the villagers living comfortably without the threat of the snake. "Let me go and see my devotee," he thinks. When he arrives at the tree, he finds the cobra badly injured among the roots. "But who has done this to you!" the sage exclaims. "O guru," says the cobra, "I did as I swore and did not bite. The villagers ceased to fear me and in return they beat me with stones and sticks and dashed me on the ground." The sage admonishes the cobra: "Fool! I told you not to bite. I never said not to hiss!"

The story ends there, but my personal addition is this: The sage again departs, and the snake, its wounds newly tended, hisses at all who dare approach it. Perceiving in this the threat of violence and imagining retribution, the villagers set the tree ablaze to flush the snake out, and when it emerges, hack it to death.

Your silence will not protect you, but neither will the bite nor the hiss. In the biomedical complex, silence, disagreement, insistence, and behavior incongruent with evidence-based medicine from a tattooed fibromyalgic Tamil American woman all constitute hissing-cum-threat (of malingering, of challenging expertise).

And so the imagination of those upholding neoliberalism and the colonial imaginary evilly bites the innocent.