In an unusual incident, a woman in a Bagalkot village spent four days with a snake that she believed was the reincarnation of her dead husband.
Sharada Mounesh Kumbar, a worker from Kulahalli village near Rabakavi, firmly believed that the rat snake that had entered her house a few days ago was her husband Mounesh Kumbar, a pot-maker, who died two years ago.
The snake entered through an open window on a rainy night. And, she noticed it the next morning.
“She said that she kept feeding it milk and water,” Basavanneppa Kumbar, one of her neighbours, said. Her belief strengthened as the snake did not harm her in any way, according to him.
Finally, some relatives and concerned villagers helped her see that it was a reptile from the wild that had lost its way and had come looking for some warmth when it rained.
A snake catcher was summoned who then caught it and released into the nearby jungle.
