If you love reptiles and reading, there’s a good chance you’ve read Snakeman by Zai Whitaker. Published in 1989, Snakeman was a ‘rah-rah book’ (in Zai’s words) about Romulus Whitaker, India’s foremost herpetologist, to whom Zai was then married. Fast forward 35 years, throw in some personal and professional upheavals and we have the revamped version, Scaling Up.
For anyone interested in herps (a term that refers to all reptiles and amphibians), the book is a treasure trove of information and anecdotes. Much of what is common knowledge today about snakes, crocs and turtles was discovered by this duo: how temperature determines the sex of mugger babies, male parental care in crocodiles and that king cobras ‘…[are] cannibalistic (which had led to the loss of a radio transmitter!)’.
Scaling Up is fascinating for any kind of reader, for the anecdotes here are both intriguing and amusing. ‘Carpet pythons were another kettle of snake… [He] gently hooked one… It thrashed wildly and pooped generously on him… At these times, I would pronounce myself the photographer and situate myself at a safe distance,’ writes Zai. This is not your regular work of environmental literature–it could easily be called ‘The Hilarious Lives and Adventures of Zai and Rom’.
Scaling Up (image courtesy Juggernaut Books) is a new expanded version of the classic naturalist biography Snakeman. Detailed illustrations by the American artist Bruce Peck (seen above, image 1) feature alongside many anecdotes starring the author’s former husband, Romulus or ‘Rom’ Whitaker, seen here in Agumbe, Karnataka in 1971 with the first king cobra he caught.
(image 3, courtesy Madras Croc Bank archives).
The book begins with Rom’s childhood fascination with snakes and progresses to his collaborative conservation efforts with Zai. An engaging blend of personal anecdotes and professional milestones, the narrative spans India and other parts of the world, highlighting scientists, researchers, colleagues and field workers who have been part of their journey. It also emphasises the crucial support of their extended family—knowing wildlife conservation was neither popular nor profitable, Zai’s family supported their passion at all times.
Zai, a writer, educator, conservationist and managing trustee of the Madras Crocodile Bank, is just as well known for her work in reptile conservation as she is for her numerous books for children and adults. Her popular children’s book Andamans Boy and her most recent, Termite Fry, feature a backdrop of ecology and natural history. This is not surprising, as Zai hails from what could be called India’s first family of conservation.
Her lineage reads like a who’s who of naturalists: Grand uncles Salim Ali (the Birdman of India) and Humayun Abdulali contributed to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. Her parents were Zafar Futehally, who established WWF-India and started Newsletter for Birdwatchers, and Laeeq Futehally, who edited and worked on accompanying materials for many of Salim Ali’s and Rom and Zai’s publications. Her siblings were Shama, instrumental in protecting Silent Valley, and Murad, working to restore the natural habitats of Kihim. Cousins: Rauf Ali, who initiated India’s first master’s course in ecology and was one of the first in the country to get a PhD in wildlife biology, and Sumaira Abdulali, the creator of Awaaz Foundation, known for fighting sand mining and noise pollution. Rom, their sons and a daughter-in-law also continue this legacy. Natural history and conservation truly run in this family’s blood.
Starting with their honeymoon in Nilambur, followed by multiple visits to Kalakad-Mundanthurai and ultimately setting up a king cobra research station in Agumbe, the Whitakers have had a long association with the Western Ghats in particular. Zai has strong ties to Kodaikanal, and she taught English for 18 years at Kodaikanal International School (KIS), the alma mater of Rom and their sons. Rom also helped found the Palni Hills Conservation Council (PHCC). While Zai taught at KIS, she continued working with the PHCC and was associated with stalwart Kodai conservationists like Bob Stewart and Tanya Balcar and Pippa Mukherjee.
The book vividly recounts Rom’s earliest adventures, capturing his growing love and passion for snakes. His journey includes catching snakes as a child, practising taxidermy, a stint in the US Army and becoming a professional snake catcher. Among an interesting cast of professional snake catchers in the US is his first guru, Bill Haast, the legendary American herpetologist. Remember the Vishakanyas of lore? The original femme fatales? These young women, brought up on a careful diet of poisons, were employed as assassins. Any contact with their bodily fluid was supposed to be fatal. Bill Haast, on the other hand, converted his body into an antivenom-producing laboratory by injecting himself with small doses of neurotoxins. Quite unlike the Vishakanyas, he saved lives with the antivenom cocktail in his blood. You might question his sanity, but you cannot deny his dedication!
While the initial chapters focus on Rom’s adventures with reptile wrangling, the book quickly moves on to the Whitakers’ vastly more important work of becoming pioneering conservationists for all reptiles, particularly crocodiles. In 1969 when he ‘…began thinking seriously about setting up a snake park that would teach people about snakes and snakebites, and also campaign for the conservation of reptiles…’, even the Wildlife Protection Act (1972) wasn’t in force and Project Tiger (1973) was still some time away. But Rom had started teaching the people of Madras (now Chennai) about snakes well before that. Rom and Zai should be credited with much of the awareness and passion those working in this field have today, through ‘the creation of a new generation of conservationists, thanks to the volunteers, interns and researchers who worked with us at the Snake Park…’
Given that snakes are both venerated and feared, it isn’t surprising that there are many myths surrounding them. Zai debunks these, especially those surrounding snakebite cures. In one instance, she makes a cryptic reference to the time the writer and hunter Kenneth Anderson made a ‘magic phone call’ to a station master to cure him when he was bitten by a snake. (Intrigued, I scoured the internet and found a blog post featuring Shri Narsiah, the station master of Polireddipalem in Andhra Pradesh.)
Apparently, people would telegram Narsiah the name and address of the snakebite victim, and he would immediately tear off a strip of cloth from his dhoti, tie it to a specific tree near the railway platform while chanting mantras. Miraculously, the victim, thousands of kilometres away, would be completely cured and the snake would die (if not already killed)! Narsiah is credited with having cured thousands, including Anderson. Talk about long-distance healing!
The data the Whitakers gathered from surveys of crocodiles in the wild highlighted the need for captive breeding to save the three Indian species—the mugger, the saltwater crocodile and the gharial. Thus, the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust (MCBT, now Madras Crocodile Bank Trust and Centre for Herpetology) was born, in 1976. Rom and Zai are the architects of reptile conservation in India, establishing the Snake Park, the MCBT and three field research stations: the Andaman and Nicobar Environment Team (ANET) on the island of South Andaman, the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS) in the Western Ghats and the Gharial Ecology Project (GEP) on the Chambal River.
The Irular, an Adivasi tribe of traditional, skilled, snake catchers with deep knowledge of reptiles, form a large and important part of the book, and Rom and Zai’s lives are closely intertwined with theirs. The Irulars are like natural history detectives, capable of identifying the species, size and even sex of a snake just from scrape marks on the ground. ‘Learning snake-hunting techniques from their fathers as soon as they can walk, many of the Irular develop a third eye for snakes,’ Zai tells us, explaining how ‘seasonal microhabitats of various species are pinpointed with amazing accuracy’.
Zai doesn’t shy away from the less pleasant aspects of a life focussed on conservation, openly discussing professional setbacks, bureaucratic tangles and the endless struggle for grants. As the book is part memoir, her relationship with Rom is a big part of the story. She shares: ‘We met occasionally over the next two years and wrote often. My collection of love letters from Rom is mostly treatises on deworming cobras, the difficulties of feeding tokay geckos, and the interesting issue of compacted bowels in monitor lizards.’ The emotional aspect of her divorce and her subsequent friendship with Rom are handled with a light touch, yet offer us a glimpse into the depth of her feelings: ‘…in the twentieth year of our marriage, Rom asked for a divorce and if there’s such a thing as a heart breaking, then mine did, and I heard it’.
Over the past 35 years, I’ve been in many places where Zai could have been, but wasn’t. I was one of the first persons to stay at the old ANET centre while doing fieldwork in Wandoor, Andaman; I visited friends at the Croc Bank and the Irula Tribal Women’s Welfare Society (ITWWS), Thandarai; I met Rom when he was filming the swimming macaques of Mundanthurai. I even met Zai’s father, Zafar Futehally, briefly while on a field trip to Kodaikanal in ’90: there he was, riding along on a horse, and I recall he asked us to look for wild raspberries, which were fruiting profusely at that time. Soon after I finished Scaling Up, I attended a reading by Zai here in Kodai. While she read from the book I was struck by the similarity of her writing in terms of tone–conversational, intimate, and informal in style. Like a fireside chat with a friend who is narrating their latest adventure, full of wry humour.
Ecological or environmental generational amnesia is a term coined by Peter Kahn and Theresa Weiss that ‘refers to how each generation considers how it first experienced a place as its true baseline, and any change that comes after it is abnormal or unnatural’. So, the baseline is different for my parents, my children and I. Nostalgia is more complicated than missing how things were better in the past, and it differs for each of us. This gap is what books like Scaling Up help to close. Much of what Zai writes about happened within my lifetime. There has been significant progress in the field of conservation, alongside innumerable losses on many fronts: the loss of habitat and the deteriorating status of most native animals and plants, in particular. When I describe to my children how things used to be, it is only their imagination that can fill in for reality. This book, therefore, offers the most vital reminder of the importance of preserving our natural world, told through the eyes of someone who lives and breathes it.
I found Scaling Up unputdownable, reading right through the night to finish it, surprised to hear the dawn chorus when I finally shut the book. Full of myths, mishaps, mirth and memories, it might just bring you closer to nature’s most misunderstood creatures.
