A Five Headed Snake! Yikes!

Another short excerpt from my forthcoming novel "Kalyana." Very excited about releasing my new novel!

“What happened next, Mummy?” I licked the edges of my lips.

“The Yamuna River raged and her waves threatened to swallow Yasudev and baby Krishna whole.” My mother would fix her penetrating stare upon me, and my heart would skip, the hairs rising on my arms. I knew what would follow: “And it was then that the five-headed snake from below the waters emerged.”

“Five-headed snake!” I would shiver in the night air.

“Sumitri, you are frightening her,” my father would say. “The child is scared of snakes and is ridden with nightmares about them, and here you are telling her stories about snakes with five heads!”

“Rajdev Seth, it’s not snakes,” my mother would say. “There was only one five-headed snake. And it was a good one.”

My mother would throw me a conspiring look and try to speak the next series of words as fast as she could before Father could demand that she end all stories for the night.

“The snake’s five heads shielded baby Krishna from the water, and the snake itself was Yasudev’s guide, allowing him to...”

“Sumitri...”

“Snakes are not to be feared, but to be embraced. They are your guides. Kalyana...”

“Sumitri!” My father would tell my mother to go back to bed, bringing the story to an abrupt end.

Snakes! Snakes! Snakes! Excerpt from my forthcoming novel "Kalyana"

Happy Chinese New Year! YEAR OF THE SNAKES! What's new for me? My new novel Kalyana. And...snakes have great symbolic significance throughout the whole book! Here's an excerpt from Kalyana featuring snakes...snakes...snakes...and more snakes.


Of all the stories my mother told me when I was young, this one alone stirred recurring nightmares. I was transported back to the SS Sangola, in the middle of the ocean. The ship was swarming with countless king cobras, slithering all around me. I could hear low growls under their hissing calls. They were coiled in front of me, wearing red maharajah crowns, while others held back, draped over the barrels, hanging on the masts. Trapped, I shivered, chanting prayers, my knees clutched to my chest. I stayed huddled in a corner of the deck as the sensation of slithering serpents crawled up my legs and across my body.

Then my mother would miraculously appear. She would hit the snakes on their heads with a blackened steel pot. Black blood and gore would paint the walls and decks of the ship as the pitiful snakes collapsed belly up, one by one, until a stream of yellow carpeted the ships' floors.