The Sanguinarian

The Sanguinarian

Tuesday 30 June 2015

Sleepless in Serpentabad #1: What the hell is this Serpentabad?

Serpentabad was a strange, strange name, for a place whose queerness defied imagination, in a part of a country in the South Asian peninsula which didn't attract a lot of attraction.

Until, of course, Serpentabad happened.

How did Serpentabad happen?

That is a story for another time- we'll come to that.

The peaceful folks of Naga Pradesh weren't happy that this mystical place, found hidden, perhaps for centuries, deep in the bowels of the Naga jungles, be named Serpentabad.

They found it weird and embarrassing, as they would tell the media in countless interviews later on.

But the Naga people might as well as had been talking to the wall.

The rest of the country had better things to do than listen to them.

They were aliens with almond-shaped eyes and flat noses, after all.

But wait.

Wasn't this about Serpentabad, and what the hell it is?

Serpentabad is more of a fantasy-land than a real place- something you're more likely to find in a fable or a mythological folk tale.

A land where there are human beings. With everything same anatomically as other human beings, except that their skin is scaly and rainbow colored. They wear snake-skins of various hues, eat gourmet snake meat food ( they have special chefs for that), follow weird sexual practices and live in houses built in the shape of a snake's wide open mouth. With foot-long, real life fangs sticking out of the entrance. They called themselves the Serpentines and grow a modified version of Rauwolfia serpentina

A land ruled by the 12-headed Serpeconda, the Emperor Lord of serpents, who lives in the Constrictor Sea. Named so because it is the official residence of the boa constrictors, the family who rules the snake kingdom.

This place was pretty much shrouded in obscurity till discovered by a mad entomologist from France. Who, by the way, went actually mad with exhilaration after discovering Serpentabad- no one knows why.

But the over-excited Jacques Risseau, now locked up in a mental institute in Paris, where he talks about his discovery from morning till night, didn't go fully mad before he had revealed Serpentabad to the world. Much to the chagrin of Serpeconda, as he would later tell awed news reporters.

How Jacques found this place, we will come to later.

But now that Serpentabad is on international radars, a team from India's biggest news channel is set to visit Serpentabad. Varnab Boast-wami the Crazy Anchor and his team, to be precise.

We will start on their story next week.

PS: Serpeconda is rolling his eyes, and sighing warily, at Boast-wami's name. He has a long and wary fight ahead of him with the Crazy Anchor.






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