An India cobra (Naja naja). Kipling’s short story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” forms a chapter of The Jungle Book (1894), and along with “Mowgli’s Brothers” is one of the most enduring tales it contains. It tells how a young mongoose finds himself in the garden of an English family in the far north of India, and follows his epic tussle to deliver both the human family and the other animals of the garden from the ever-present threat of two Indian cobras.
Introduction
Little mongoose Rikki-tikki-tavi has been swept by a flood into the garden of an English couple living in a bungalow in Sugauli (near the border with Nepal) during the Raj. He is immediately adopted as a pet by Teddy, the couple’s young boy, but Rikki-tikki soon finds that not all is well in the garden. Indeed, Darzee the tailorbird is desolate.
“WHAT is the matter?” asked Rikki-tikki.
“We are very miserable,” said Darzee.* “One of our babies fell out of the nest yesterday and Nag ate him.”
“H’m!” said Rikki-tikki, “that is very sad — but I am a stranger here. Who is Nag?”*
Darzee and his wife only cowered down in the nest without answering, for from the thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a low hiss — a horrid cold sound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake’s eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of.
* ‘Naga’ is Sanskrit for ‘serpent’. The feminine is Nagaina.
* Darzee is a tailorbird (Orthotomus sutorius), which constructs a nest by folding a leaf over and stitching or riveting the edges together with plant fibres or sticky gossamer, forming a cup. The nest itself is then laid inside, lined with soft grass. See a picture at Wikimedia Commons. Kipling makes it clear that Mrs Darzee has the advantage of her mate in both wits and courage.
Word Games
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
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