Naagrai khatsao aadam chaalee

Bael poore nun drav trovness ghah

Zaat heveth go tass Heemalee

Maehav gots baalee cheon deedaar

                                                                   Shams Faqir

The father is a wee bit hesitant before reporting that a few days earlier he and his daughter were resting near a spring in a garden when they were woken up by a strange commotion.  They saw that a knot of snakes emerging from the spring and metamorphosing into human beings. It was a serpent king and his retinue. The king began to sing a sad song about how dearly he loved Heemal and how much he missed her. Then, just before the break of dawn, as they were about to leave, they saw the old man and his daughter. The king threw some water from the spring at the duo. Then the whole party transformed back into snakes and slid back into the spring. The water sprinkled over them had made the father–daughter duo forget everything about the night until they saw the tuft of Naagrai’s hair and the spell of forgetfulness was broken.

Heemal jumps for joy. She gives them her last worldly possession, her golden mortar and pistil, and begs them to take her to the spring. Once there, she waits for days for her beloved Naagrai to come out again.

Finally, like a tide overflowing a rocky shore, on the next full moon night, Naagrai emerges from the spring with his retinue. He sings:

Heemali, myani Heemali, logse balai Heemali

Shehij chaani loala tharre

Shehij chaani shoala zarre

Tsetas katte oasum shehjar te ma zaali

Heemali, myani Heemali

Heemal interrupts his sad song. He is overjoyed on seeing her, but wary of the wrath of his serpent wives. He tells Heemal to wait for him for a few months. He promises to come back for her once he has made proper arrangements.

There is another split in the narrative here. In one version, she agrees to wait for him in a forest after he promises to come back within six months. One day, while she is singing, waiting for him, a human prince passing through the forest hears her song. He is captivated by her voice and seeks her out. One look at her and he is even more mesmerized by her beauty and asks her to marry him. She tells him she is already married and is waiting for her husband to return. He tells her that a husband who intends to live with his wife does not abandon her like he has, and tries to convince her that her Naagrai will never return, so she should not waste her time waiting for him. But she remains steadfast in her faith that her husband will return before the promised time has passed.

When he sees that he cannot plant doubt in her mind, he tries to make a deal with her. He asks her promise that if Naagrai does not return within six months, she will marry him instead. Since she is supremely confident about Naagrai’s return, she agrees to his proposal, so that he can stop pestering her, and believing that she will never actually have to carry it out.

But the human prince secretly plants guards around the forest to kill any person who tries to enter. When Naagrai returns and tries to enter the forest, the guards kill him. The prince brings his head to Heemal and asks her to marry him, now that her lover is dead. A heartbroken Heemal tears her hair out, lashes out at the prince and his soldiers. They are forced to leave, leaving her to roam the forest as a mendicant for the rest of her life.

In the other version, when she is reunited with Naagrai by the spring, she refuses to let go of him a second time. She slides down his torso and grabs his leg and holds it tightly, not letting him budge an inch. He has no option but to relent. He cannot carry her into the underworld in her human form as that would mean inviting the fire of his serpent wives’ jealousy, so he turns her into a pebble and hides her in his turban. Then he descends back into the underworld.

Also Read: Part I: ‘WATER HOLDS WATER TOGETHER’ 

At dinner, his serpent wives complain of a strange human smell. They look everywhere, around and inside the big pots containing rats cooked in yogurt, in the pitchers of milk, into the vats containing half-boiled eggs, and under the table. They smell and taste the tsettin of centipedes and ants. They coil and uncoil themselves, and sniff their own bodies and the bodies of their children. They also sniff at each other’s bodies. They find nothing. Finally, they have a hunch that the source of the smell is Naagrai’s turban. They all turn towards him with an accusatory look in their eyes. He concedes that he has brought a human to the underworld, but makes them promise they will not harm her. Then he turns Heemal back into her original form. In the light of their pearl chandeliers, golden lamps and shiny silverware, her skin radiates like a moon on a cloudless night. The hot knife of her beauty and grace slices through their butter-lump hearts.

However, they have promised not to harm her, so they substitute violence with cruelty. They decide to treat her like a servant and make her perform all the household chores. Each day, she has to clean the palace with the maidservants, wash the moults of the serpent wives and their children and put them out to dry, and then cook food for everybody.

One of her duties is to boil milk for all the serpent children. When the milk cools down sufficiently, she has to sound a gong so that they can come and drink it. One day, her ladle falls into the vat while she is boiling the milk. It produces a sound similar to the gong. A bed of serpent children slithers into the kitchen and jumps into the boiling milk, burning to death immediately. The serpent queens hear the hisses of agony and come rushing into the kitchen. When they see their children writhing in pain and dying, their seething teeth riddle Heemal’s body with a thousand constellations. She dies instantly.

Naagrai is inconsolable. He has lost his children as well as his beloved Heemal. He takes her corpse to the surface so that it can pass through the proper rituals of humans. Leaving her by her favourite spring, the place at which they had been reunited, he returns to the underground to bury his dead children. He passes the rest of his days in grief, travelling around the country, from one spring to another, wailing for Heemal.

This is where this version of the story ends. In yet another version, after Naagrai has placed the corpse by the spring, a Brahmin finds it and, awestruck by Heemal’s irresistible beauty, uses his powers to bring her back to life. He then takes her with him to his hut to recover. Meanwhile, Naagrai has been missing Heemal a lot and he resurfaces to look at her body one last time. Finding it missing, he becomes restless and, following her scent, reaches the Brahmin’s hut. There he finds that Heemal is asleep and breathing again. He is elated. He coils himself at the foot of the bed, waiting for her to wake up. But the Brahmin’s son enters the hut and, upon sighting a serpent, hacks it to death. The commotion wakes Heemal up and even while she is rubbing her eyes, she instantly recognizes her husband. Her screams reach the Red and Yellow seas. She howls how her husband has suffered much on her account and bids him a final goodbye. Naagrai is burned and Heemal commits sati on his pyre.

This version ends here. In one more version, when Heemal sees that Naagrai is dead, she drops down dead as well. When the Brahmin returns and sees what his son has done, he feels responsible for all that has come to pass. He leaves his hut, puts the two bodies in a cart and wanders through the country, hoping to revive them through some magic or divine intervention. The burden of guilt is heavy; soon his tired bones start to wilt. One day, with his knees about to give up, he decides to rest in a forest. He is woken up in the middle of the night by some sudden, strange sounds. A very unusual pigeon couple is having a conversation.

The female pigeon feels sorry for the lovely couple, robbed of their life in the prime of their youth. The male pigeon tries to soothe her by telling her that they can be revived if their bodies are burnt and the ashes thrown into a spring. The Brahmin thanks the heavens and determines to follow the instructions of the pigeons.

He burns the bodies and throws the ashes into a spring. As soon as the ashes sink, they are transformed into Heemal and Naagrai. The Brahmin hands over some clothes to them, which they wear before coming out of the water. Since everybody thinks they are dead, they decide to move on to a different part of the country to start a new life and live happily ever after.

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To be continued……