In memory of Babiya, the guardian crocodile of Ananthapura Lake Temple
Every night you guarded Him — the blue-skinned God in his sacred abode in the middle of an emerald-green lake. You waited in the shadows until the first light of dawn when the head priest unlocked the sanctum sanctorum door. That was your cue. To return to your burrow nestled in the lake, surrounded by silence and silhouettes of green shrubs, large enough to house your 9 ft body. There, you lay and thought of Him.
When it was time for the morning puja, you waded through the water and placed your jaws on a stone, bald white like a hen’s egg, to witness it. The clanging of bells and cymbals echoed through the space, rippled the water beneath your limbs, as the doors of the sreekovil flung open. You could never queue outside the sanctum sanctorum to catch a glimpse of Him. It would scare the others, his devotees, you know. So you slipped behind the lotus plants in the lake and closed your eyes and felt his divine presence through the three-tiered lamp blazing golden in the hands of the head priest as he blessed one and all.
You know Him. You have heard His every story. Tales of Dashavatharam, the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu, were etched in your cells. Even your icy-cold blood could not quell the warm glow of devotion coursing through your scaly body. Some days after the puja, undisturbed in your den, behind the curtain of multicolored fish, you wondered if He, the Supreme Lord, the Creator, Destroyer and Preserver of the Universe, knew of you, a mere crocodile.
Your devotion always gave you an enormous appetite for naivedyam, the temple’s prasad, which was also your sole source of sustenance. You emerged every day from your burrow after the noon puja hoping and praying it would be the Lord feeding you boiled rice and jaggery, and not the head priest. But then you wore the disappointment well on your thick, scaly skin, never once wavering in your piety. Sometimes there would be a throng of devotees to feed you. Snot-covered children. Shifty-eyed devotees. The prasad wobbling in their sweaty hands. Their faces white with fright. You never blamed them. Your predatory reputation preceded you. Mortals and their textbooks. They didn’t know you were the Lord’s biggest devotee.
That day felt different. You felt a pain in your underbelly. You thrashed your tail, leaving behind a muddle of mud and algae, and returned to your burrow. The morning bells jangled. You couldn’t attend the puja for the first time in over seventy years. Would He be angry and disappointed? You wondered as you lay still in the murky hole, when the cloudy mirror cleared and in the silvery-white water, you saw Him glowing with the splendour of a thousand suns, resting on the coils of the magnificent Shesh Nag floating in the ancient ocean of milk. Narayana! you said, as the last breath of life left your enormous body.