Vava Suresh Vava Suresh

Seldom do governments make a plea on the floor of the Legislative Assembly to a poor and unemployed high school dropout to join them. On March 12, Kerala Forest Minister K.B. Ganesh Kumar invited Vava Suresh, 38, to join his department. The reason for the offer: Suresh is the state's most sought-after snake-catcher.

Suresh gets 300 calls everyday from across the state to entrap the slithery creatures. He has caught 30,000 snakes, including 300 king cobras, in the past 25 years. He has survived over 250 snake bites and has had to be put on the ventilator at least five times. In 2011, his index finger was cut off after a cobra bite while his right wrist lost its movement from another bite. "No matter who calls for help, I reach as fast as I can. It's my life's calling," he says, adding that he will never kill a snake. "I love them." Except for travel expenses, he does not charge money for catching them. "I think I have been sent by God to do this," he says, sitting in his tiny, thatched hut near Thiruvananthapuram where he lives with his family and pets, including 20-25 snakes. The master snake-catcher says he will not accept the minister's offer because he would be unable to help society the way he wants to if he is employed.

"All the snakes I catch are documented and handed over to the forest department," he says. But his job doesn't get over with that. Officials, who would be terrified at the sight of these creatures, take Suresh's help again to let them into the wild. Every two months, he lets around 500 snakes into the wild. Suresh started when he was just 15 and that too out of curiosity. "I used to throw stones at them or try to kill them in the beginning. But soon I realised I was in love with the 'beautiful people'," he says. He claims he has developed immunity to snake venom due to repeated bites. But R. Dileep Kumar, a post doctoral researcher on snakes at Kerala University's Biology and Bioinformatics who has closely monitored Suresh's passion, says it is impossible to acquire complete immunity. "Maybe he has developed immunity to some of the proteins in snake venom. But, it is impossible to be immune to all. What protects Suresh is his self-confidence. This confidence triggers metabolic activities in his body to resist the damage," says Kumar.



