Zai Whitaker writes of her (and Rom’s) wild adventures in conserving reptiles and their habitats

Rom grew up in Hoosick, upstate New York, where he lived from birth (1943) to 1947 with his mother, Doris Norden, and sister, Gail, in his Aunt Elly’s Dutch mansion which had adjoining gardens and a beautiful lake. This idealistic childhood saw the beginning of his lifelong fascination for snakes. There were plenty of harmless garters and milk snakes in the surrounding countryside during the summer months, but more importantly, his mother encouraged this hobby and interest in every possible way.

His alphabet songs did not follow the usual pattern of A for apple, B for bat; it was A for amphibian, B for brontosaurus, C for coral snake. Doris even stoutly defended him when one of his pets, a DeKay’s snake, showed up in the glove compartment of a neighbour’s car. When it was time to think about school, it was St Luke’s in New York City, very different from the free, liberal atmosphere of Hoosick. It was not a happy fit, and his mother later told me how his teacher ended up installing a punching bag for his exclusive use.

Within two years, there was another move, this time further afield, to Bombay. Doris had married Rama Chattopadhyaya, son of the freedom fighter Kamaladevi, who became the main force behind the movement to revive our traditional handicrafts. Aged eight and twelve, the two children, Rom and Gail, were sent to boarding school, at first to Lovedale in the Nilgiris and a year later to Kodaikanal International School in the Palani Hills. There, the evergreen shola forests provided plenty of diversion from boring studies and Rom began a systematic collection of snakes, lizards and bugs. Many of these lived under his bed and enjoyed the time and attention that his studies were deprived of. His association with the sholas of Kodai spelt the beginning of a deep interest in tropical rainforests, and thirty years later, he helped form the Palani Hills Conservation Council to protect the unique environment of these hills.

At Kodai International, children were encouraged in outdoor activities and this suited Rom just fine. You could go off and camp for the weekend at Gundar Falls, Neptune’s Pool, Berijam Lake and other beautiful, forested spots within hiking distance.

At age twelve, Rom made a jump into the world of venomous snakes. A Russell’s viper swimming in the cold Berijam Lake at an elevation of 2,000 metres caught his attention while on a camp. It was carefully picked up in a butterfly net and deposited in his lunch box. It lived with him for a few days, until some of his older friends wisely advised him to get rid of it. After reading, in the only snake book in the library, that it was “one of the most virulent snakes in all of British India and causes many deaths among natives”, Rom’s first dangerous snake was reluctantly taken back to the wild and released.

It wasn’t long before schoolkids and community people started bringing the occasional snake to him, usually the burrowing uropeltids or shieldtail snakes that were then common in the hills, and sometimes the mildly venomous green pit viper, locally known as the banana viper. Once a friend’s eagerness to bring him a snake ended badly. Bill Brannen returned from a hike with a severely swollen and painful hand and related how he had tried to stuff a fat pit viper into his water canteen! Understandably, it turned and bit him on the finger. One of the boy scout friends with him decided to try incising the bite with a hunting knife and this treatment ended up causing more problems than the bite.

Probably the main reason Rom gained a certain dubious notoriety at Kodai School was his pet python. Bought from an animal dealer at Crawford Market in Bombay, this 2-metre snake became a gentle, much-handled pet. Technically, of course, no pets were allowed at school. But the python somehow slipped by for several years, as part of the empty luggage under the dormitory beds.

Some of the things Rom and his friends did in school make me wonder how they survived their youth. In the spear and bow-and-arrow phase, they discovered the local blacksmith who turned out superb spearheads and arrowheads, based on designs copied from Tarzan comics and pictures of native Americans in history books. There were only a couple of casualties during this period. But the fireworks, bomb and rocket phase was to give a few of them burns to remember and some really close calls. They made pipe cannons to shoot marbles way out into the lake, waterproof bombs to blast fish and, eventually, rockets that actually went up. They experimented with Molotov cocktails, thanks to Rom’s discovery of a World War II pamphlet called Bomber’s Handbook, and produced everything short of nitroglycerine in the chemistry lab.

During holidays in Bombay, he visited BNHS to read up on the snakes of Palani Hills and to make contact with naturalists and taxidermists. It was here that he first met Baba and Sálim Mamoo. Rom was impressed by the fact that their interest in nature had developed into their careers. At BNHS, he learnt about bird collection and skin mounting, which was becoming a favourite activity. As it had with both Sálim Mamoo and Baba, BNHS was to play a big role in encouraging his interest in ecology. And in Kodai, the Fathers at the Sacred Heart College at Shenbaganur helped him hone his taxidermy skills and occasionally let him use their old black powder guns.

When Rom graduated from Kodai School, he was sixteen. By then, there were two more children in the family, Neel and Nina. Both were friends of mine at the Bombay International School (BIS), of which Doris as well as my parents were founders. Neel was in my class; more interested in music than homework (or even classwork). His ready wit and charming smile got him out of many tight spots with teachers and the principal. The two families, Rom’s and mine, were coming together, through the BNHS, BIS and the wider natural history network of the city.

Excerpted with permission from Scaling Up, Zai Whitaker, Juggernaut Books.