Many people ask me what started my fascination for snakes. My mother tells me that I have been chasing them ever since I could crawl on my knees. The start may have been further back when a snake dancing on my cradle cast a spell on me while, while I slept peacefully under it - my mother witnessed this incident rooted to the spot terrified all the while.
My actual work with snakes though started only when I took a year off from school to travel around India, learning snake handling at the Pune snake park, spider rearing at Madras, and croc handling under Romulus Whitaker at the Croc bank in Mammallapuram.