'Snakeman of India' Romulus Whitaker's memoir to release in January

He kept a pet python in a tin trunk under his bed in boarding school. He would buy monitor lizards for ten bucks in Crawford market in Bombay and set them free outside town hoping they would survive.

These are stories that US-born Indian wildlife conservationist Romulus Whitaker, India's famous snakeman, has recounted in his memoirs, which will release in January next year.

The book, will revolve among other things on his love affair with 'fierce creatures' like a pet python which began at a tender age.

'Snakes, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll', which is the first volume a multi-part autobiography co-written with the Indian herpetologist's wife Janaki Lenin, is published by HarperCollins India.

When his mother married Kamaladevi Chattopadhayaya's son and moved to Mumbai, Whitaker was transplanted from a conventional childhood in the US to an exciting world of India.

From the beginning, he was fascinated by India, humans as well as animals. Sent to a boarding school in Kodai, he kept a pet python in a tin trunk under his bed and realised, from an early age that all he really wanted to do was to work with snakes.

Sent to the US for college, reuniting with his own father, Whitaker soon realised that he preferred snakes to lecture halls and left to work in a Florida snake farm.

Hunter to protector

A major theme in the book is his transformation from a hunter to protector. The first volume of his memoir brings the India of the 1950s and the US of the '60s to life. It is the story of a boy who would become one of the greatest conservationists of his generation, discovering the wonders of India's extraordinary natural world. He founded India's first snake park and a few years later co-founded Madras Crocodile Bank.

"I accompanied Mom on her weekly shopping to Crawford Market, a chaotic jumble of shops, where everything from fish and chicken to dry goods and imported goodies such as Crosse & Blackwell grape jelly and stuffed olives were on sale," he writes.

"Not only was the place photogenic, but it also had a live animal market, which sold puppies and kittens as well as tropical fish and the occasional reptile. Star tortoises were often on sale. More than once I bought a skinny monitor lizard for ten bucks and let it go outside of town, hoping it would survive," Whitaker narrates.

A six-foot python

Once, his mother's Danish friend Ayo accompanied them to the market. Whitaker and Ayo went to a pet-market section where a six-foot python in perfect condition was for sale. The seller wanted hundred rupees.

Ayo asked Whitaker if he wanted it.

"Without waiting for my answer, she handed a hundred-rupee note to the seller. Too stupefied to thank her for this fantastic gift, I hoisted the gunny bag on my shoulder and we made our way to where Mom was getting her purchases packed into boxes. Typical of her style, Mom calmly took the news of a reptilian addition to the household," he writes.

Whitaker says in the first volume of his memoirs, he is divulging how his snake obsession began very early, how he moved to India and spent more time hunting than at school, and his pivotal experience of working at the largest snake venom lab in the world, the Miami Serpentarium. 

(With agency inputs)