It is late in the evening on the outskirts of a village in Angul, Odisha. The green around them is dense, the road has given way to fields, and somewhere nearby, a snake has left people unsure of what to do next.

The villagers keep their distance. However, the rescuers don't.

They arrive with their hooks, bags, and equipment, first trying to identify the snake and then figuring out the safest way to get it out. Once it is secured, the team will coordinate with the Forest Department and release it in a suitable forested area.

For Biplab Mahapatra, this is an ordinary rescue call.

More than a decade ago, however, his life looked very different. He was a journalist, spending his days chasing stories. Today, he spends them chasing rescue calls, training volunteers and trying to convince people that the snake they fear does not necessarily have to be killed.

"I have not chosen this job," he says. "It is destiny; this thing has chosen me."

And his story of becoming a rescuer began with a python.

From reporting stories to rescuing animals

Biplab had always been drawn to nature.

A professional climber, he spent years trekking and travelling through forests, including in Himachal Pradesh. He had also grown up around animals. His father, who was a journalist himself, was fond of pets, so their home often had Indian dogs.

But journalism was still Biplab's profession.

He was freelancing and working as a crime reporter when his interest in animal rescue began taking a more serious turn. He remembers rescuing dogs in those early days, but snakes had always fascinated him.

Then came a large python that people were preparing to kill.

The snake had eaten one of their goats. For the people who had lost their livestock, it was a threat that needed to be removed.

For Biplab, it was an animal that needed to be rescued.

"I started with one rescue of a big, huge python," he recalls. "That inspired me to start a new organisation."

The rescue also made him think about something much bigger happening around him.

Angul had a serious human-wildlife conflict problem. Elephants, crocodiles and other animals regularly came into conflict with people, but Biplab noticed that there was little attention being paid to snakes.

"There was no one to mitigate this thing in my place," he says.

So, in 2011, he began working with People for Animals and started building what would eventually become People for Animals, Angul. In 2013, the organisation was formally registered. Biplab started it with three others, including a senior and two friends from different professions.

For the first two years, he tried to balance the work with his career.

Then he decided he couldn't do both.

“I registered my organisation and started focusing on rescue full-time," he says. There was no big office or ready-made infrastructure waiting for him. In the early days, even keeping things running was a struggle.

"Initially, funds were a big challenge for us. We were managing things with great difficulty," he says.  Even a snake rescue requires equipment such as hooks, bags, and other protective gear.

But Biplab soon realised that equipment wasn't the only thing missing.

There was something else the community needed: knowledge.

'The rescue is not the solution'

At first,........

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