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.