Many twists in the tail

Her earlier Tigers in Red Weather was a sheer delight in terms of perspectives on tiger conservation and  imagery that the forests she wrote about. Reading Where the Serpent Lives, one knows where the imagery and the several parallels drawn to the world of forests come from. Ruth Padel travelled to Karnataka to research for this novel, and it seems to have paid off.

Like most of Padel’s works, poetry and science come together and create magic. The very opening lines of the novel are gripping. “Rainforest, in the dry season. If you had looked closely at those black zigzag lines under green bamboo, you would have seen they were not shadows of overlapping leaves but edges between the charcoal-grey scales of her head.” She is describing the King Cobra, and one almost feels its presence.

About the plot itself, there’s Rosamund, married to a music promoter, Tyler, who claims he’s “loaded” and is “doing shockingly well”. There’s Russel, their teenage son and his silences. Rosamund, who once was surrounded by admirers, now is lonely. Then there is Richard, a conservation scientist, working in the rainforests of Karnataka, and his wife Irena. Richard once loved Rosamund, but she is too much under Tyler’s spell, to even realise what Richard felt about her. The conservationist then marries Irena, Rosamund’s best friend, and now his too. Richard has immense respect for Rosamund’s father, a snake conservationist of great repute, who lives in Madras and is the scientific advisor of the Chooramaya Reptile Research Centre. Rosamund has cut off all ties with her father, owing to a series of misunderstandings. Meanwhile her relationship with Tyler goes from bad to worse. Eventually, Tyler dies in a car crash, and there are several revelations.

Eventually, Rosamund and Russel come to India. The India of Rosamund’s childhood, the India that stood for betrayal for a major part of her life. And the knots slowly untie themselves. While Rosamund always blamed her father for her mother’s death, it so turns out that her father had no role to play at all. The grandfather and grandson warm up to each other over the one common passion they both have — snakes. Russel’s imaginary snake Kaa, with whom he makes conversations all the time, and his grandfather’s passion for real snakes and the world they inhabit.

There are references to Nagamandala, Girish Karnad’s famous play, which has its origins in the folklore of the Dakshina Kannada region of Karnataka, where snakes are revered as gods. Snakes are perceived as protectors, but also as destroyers. The character of Tyler seems to have been moulded on this snake metaphor. A protector some times, a destroyer at other times, but always powerful. His hold on Rosamund breaks only when he dies.

Padel straddles the world of myth and reality with immense ease. Her evocative prose takes the reader along the many twists and turns and the end happens in India. With Russel and his grandfather’s encounter with the King Cobra. And the line, “Well, Russel. You have met, face to face, one of the lords of life.”A journey that starts with the King Cobra ends with it.

Where the Serpent lives
Ruth Padel
Little Brown,2010,
pp 320, Rs 595