Romulus Whitaker interview: The snakeman of India on his autobiography Snakes, Drugs and Rock N’ Roll

March 21, 2024 09:15 am | Updated 09:15 am IST

Romulus Whitaker recounts recollections, with creatures nice and small, from the primary 25 years of his life in his recently-published autobiography, Snakes, Drugs and Rock N’ Roll

Romulus Whitaker with a spectacled cobra, 2020
| Photo Credit: Janaki Lenin

Promise me you gained’t kill a snake — Romulus Whitaker’s mom mentioned to the young boy, when he introduced home his first milk snake in a jelly jar. He had discovered it underneath a rock on the pastures of Upstate New York’s Hoosick, the place he spent a number of of his childhood years. She referred to as the creature stunning. This valuable second set the tone for Whitaker’s life and profession within the firm of reptiles, large and small.

And, so it ought to come as no shock that his life spills over multiple quantity of an autobiography. The unassuming American who’s hailed as ‘the snakeman of India’ — for Madras, the person behind the beloved Snake Park and Crocodile Bank based in 1976 — lays naked his early years within the irreverent, partaking Snakes, Drugs, and Rock ‘N’ Roll: My Early Years (printed by HarperCollins), the primary a part of his autobiography written with creator and spouse, Janaki Lenin.

Was the title meant to shock? From his home, on the outskirts of Bengaluru, the 80-year-old opens with a hearty, full snort. “This seemed to be a title that would grab attention, at the snakes level, drugs level or the rock n’ roll level. It also reflects the age that I was talking about, the first 25 years of my life. I have had this title in mind for possibly 10 years!”

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The ebook is a straightforward learn with interludes from Rom’s college days, his time in service as a medic for the US Army in the course of the Vietnam battle, and at sea as a sailor, amongst early days of profession. The trajectory catches one unawares.

Whitaker along with his pet kite, Bombay; 1959

A protracted highway

It took Janaki and Whitaker practically 5 years to place the ebook collectively. It was no single second or incident, moderately the conversations that the naturalist had with acquaintances and associates — generally over a glass of beer — who incessantly ask about what formed his formative years, rising up, and his time in Agumbe, that led to the concept of an autobiography.

Whitaker says, “I guess people just got sick of me telling an individual story, they said, ‘we wanna hear it all’.” His early years, generally in astonishingly vivid element, thus got here alive.

The particulars make one surprise about how properly documented Whitaker’s childhood years have been. “Actually, my mom [Dorris Norden] can be blamed for a lot of it because she was wonderful! The main person who shaped my worldview was my mother. She saved so many of my early writings, like the letters I sent home from school, narrating the various experiences I have had. Before she passed, she handed over everything she collected over the years. And it’s not only the letters that I wrote home, but the letters I wrote to my cousins in America. They were very fascinated by my life in India,” he remembers.

In all of the hours spent discussing the construction and circulation of his recollections, he’s evidently nostalgic for some elements of his early childhood. “Even though I was born in New York City and spent a few years there, the move to Hoosick out in the countryside was just magical. That set the tone for the rest of my life, really. I wanted to be out in the wild then, and I am still the same. If I want to relive something, it would be going back to that place.”

He continues, “On a recent visit, I turned over a rock, and lo and behold, there was another snake. I was thinking to myself it is probably the great-great-great grandson or granddaughter of the snake that I caught back then!”

Through the narrative, the onus Whitaker locations on individuals and relationships is unmissable. A tiny window into his life and transfer to India, his college days in Lawrence School, Lovedale, and Highclerc School (now Kodaikanal International) and his relationship along with his Indian stepfather Rama Chattopadhyay, and step-grandparents Harindranath and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, all make the narrative private.

When he began working, a number of others turned pivotal to his life within the wild. In the US, it was his former boss on the Miami Serpentarium, Bill Haast, and a hero of yesteryear, Raymond Ditmars of the Bronx Zoo, and in India, one other hero, a British physician and herpetologist referred to as Colonel Frank Wall.

A well-lived life lends itself naturally to an attractive learn. “Well, it’s my story so it’s a bit hard not to boast too much but we did try to minimise the ‘I, me, mine’ adjectives. The combination of my memory, and Janaki’s editorial skill is what shaped it,” Whitaker provides.

This quantity barely scratches the floor of his life’s work as a naturalist. “The book shows me as a kid who didn’t really gel with academics at all. I had much more fun out in the wild.”

He assures, “The second volume is in preparation and we are halfway through it. I have 100 times more stories to filter out, and I am fortunate that Janaki is very clinical about getting the right story in the right place. We have to be meticulous in choosing the best ones.”

Most mornings now are spent poring over nuggets of discovered recollections and sheafs of analysis. More from a unprecedented life await, the place all of the wild issues are.