A Serpentine Quest

In 1969, in the small village of Umbraj, in the Junnar taluka of Pune district, an eight-year-old boy, who could not yet comprehend the idea of death, stood dumbstruck at the sight of people wailing over a woman who had just died of a snakebite. It was his first brush with snakebites, a menace that kills thousands of people in India every year. This early encounter would foreshadow the course of his life.

The boy, Sadanand Raut, grew up to become a doctor. In 1992, he established a small dispensary and clinic in Junnar. One day in 1994, Raut was informed that the eight-year-old daughter of a farm labourer had been bitten