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My village is Bhupani Khanpur, India.
From childhood my job has been to display snakes,
play the flute and beg in the village.
We used to go to villages, play the flute and draw a crowd.
Then we would take out the snakes one by one
and say, "This is a rat snake."
"If he bites a man, the man will die in just 5, 10 or 15 minutes."
Then we would show the cobra and say,
if it bites you, you will die in 2 minutes.
People liked our show.
They would give us a good amount of money.
They liked it, and our children's stomachs were full.
One day, I traveled to Delhi, India.
I had a king cobra with me.
There is a place in Delhi called Rangpuri,
and I was putting on a show to earn money,
when a Wildlife SOS team arrived.
They caught me, and beat me up.
I had a king cobra with me, and they confiscated it.
Wildlife SOS is a conservation organization,
and one of our key objectives when it comes to snakes and reptiles
is to try to bring an end to a cruel and barbaric form
of abusing and exploiting of snakes,
such as snake charming.
Snake charming has been a centuries' old practice in India,
and what used to happen back then was
that snake charmers really had skills in handling snakes,
which were venomous.
But, unfortunately, over time, that skill has just gone,
and what we have are just modified beggars
who smash the hell out of a snake, and use them and just
throw them off when they're finished with them.
What these snake charmers do to these snakes
is really, really quite sad.
They basically dehydrate them,
they stick them in a box, forget about them,
use them whenever they want to make a performance
or beg some money from people.
Once the job is done, they just throw the snake away,
because they don't care, and the snake then sometimes dies.
It takes them weeks of starvation to die,
because the fangs have been removed,
the venom glands have been removed.
They can't really hunt and fend for themselves anymore.
If it was poisonous, we would break its teeth.
We would use a needle which is used to stitch a sack
and we would make a cut and pull out the poison sacks
from both sides.
Snake charmers technically are wildlife criminals.
They are poaching animals.
They're removing snakes from their natural habitat
and exploiting them
when they actually have no right to do that,
and the laws actually protect snakes.
When we arrested Ram Singh initially with a king cobra....
It was quite horrifying what some of these snake charmers
can do to their snakes.
I went home and thought about them taking my snake.
I cried about it, even my children cried.
I was very troubled for many days.
I hadn't ever learned any other trade, so I couldn't do any other work.
I thought, "I can't bring up my children like this,"
"I don't know how to do any other work, I don't have a job,"
"I can't start a business because I don't have the money."
I don't think any tradition which is
cruel and barbaric in nature
needs to be preserved.
Life moves on.
Our forefathers never wore clothes.
We never wore watches or footwear.
We used to walk barefoot in the forest.
Today, we don't do that anymore.
Our lives have changed culturally.
Why should the poor snake charmer
continue to live a life of poverty
and disadvantage himself and his family
just because some other people like to call this tradition.
I met Wildlife SOS again and said,
Sir, I have no recourse, please do something for me.
I was in a terrible condition.
I was like a mad man, with a long, long beard.
Snake charming is the same as begging.
So after that Kartick said, "Okay. Will you work with us?"
I feel so good.
I'm getting a lot of good karma from doing that.
What I used to do before was a sin,
breaking the snake's teeth and all.
So now when we go to the jungle to rescue and release snakes,
I feel good freeing the snake.
The snake charmers on the outskirts of the city
are dropping their old ways.
I tell them what Wildlife SOS has taught me,
and how it helped me.
My heart says
if snake charming disappears completely, it would be good.