Ask most people what a firefighter does, and the answer comes quickly: they put out fires. The helmet, the hose, the red engine screaming down the road.

The image is so fixed in our minds that we rarely stop to question it. Which is why it might come as a surprise to learn that in Mumbai, across an entire financial year, fires accounted for less than 27% of everything the city’s fire brigade was called to handle.

The other 73% was everything else. And in India, “everything else” turns out to be quite a lot.

There are cobras behind washing machines and crocodiles in school toilets. There are lift breakdowns in high-rises and children who lock themselves into bedrooms at 3 am. There are elderly residents alone behind jammed doors, baby monkeys tangled in barbed wire, and beehives the size of suitcases hanging over building entrances.

For each of these, across every city and town in India, there is one number people reach for. And it is the same number they would dial if their kitchen were on fire.

India’s firefighters show up for all of it — without a separate helpline, without a specialised unit, and without complaint. This International Firefighters’ Day, observed annually on 4 May, we look at some of the regular and unusual calls fire and rescue personnel handle every day.

Of all the things that land in a fire station’s lap, snakes are perhaps the most telling.

A peer-reviewed study found that 63% of snake rescuers in Tamil Nadu were primarily contacted through the fire and rescue service. When a family finds a cobra behind their appliances at 9 pm, their first call is not to a herpetologist — it is the fire station.

In fact, Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services officially lists snake-catching among its services, noting that personnel “are........

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