When Director Srijit Mukherji's 24 Pet Snakes Gave Kahaani Actor Parambrata 'Severe Psychosomatic Stomach Upset'
Renowned film director Srijit Mukherji has 24 exotic snakes as his pets at his residence. He says it was his childhood dream to keep snakes as pets.
Begum Jaan director Srijit Mukherji recently shared that he had a dream since childhood to have snakes as pets, and a Government of India scheme in 2020 helped him realise it. He now has a nest of snakes at his place.
Speaking during an interview to The Indian Express in front of a live audience at a Kolkata college, the acclaimed director spoke about his the subject of his latest film, Shotyi Bole Shotyi Kichhu Nei, and directing 12 prolific actors in it, his past works, and Bengali cinema in general, and also took questions from the audience.
Kahaani Actor Parambrata Chatterjee, who plays a central character in 'Shotyi Bole...', was also present on the IE Screen Live event.
During a segment of the interview, the director and the actor were shown some of their past images and were asked to speak about them. One particular image had Srijit posing with a white snake around his neck.
Asked to "explain" the image, Srijit said it was his pet snake 'Ananta', a leucistic ball python, and described how the snake became his pet: "Post 2020, when the Government of India made keeping of exotic pets legal...my childhood dream of keeping a snake as a pet materialised."
Srijit has in the past shared his love for snakes. One can see the director playing with snakes at pet shops abroad in the images and videos he posted on Instagram.
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Got A 'Severe Psychosomatic Stomach Upset': Parambrata
As Srijit spoke about his love for snakes during the interview, Parambrata sought to add "a little something" to his explanation. "It's not one snake, it's 24 now. I refused to go to his place now," the actor divulged.
In a lighter vein, Parambrata also shared how he came back with a "severe psychosomatic stomach upset" after a visit to Srijit's place last month. "You cannot have 24 snakes looking at you from different cages, and different corners of the house."
Parambrata went on to say that if he had "contacts in Delhi", he would have tried to "repeal" the particular "Act" that allows to keep snakes as pets.
The 2020 "law" Srijit referred to was in fact an amnesty advisory issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in June that year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The advisory on a one-time voluntary disclosure scheme allowed individuals to declare the protected exotic live species they possessed so a comprehensive database could be created for monitoring them. The scheme was designed to tackle the issue of zoonotic diseases, create an inventory of exotic live species to ensure better compliance with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and oversee their import.
The amnesty was at the time only an advisory rather than a legally binding regulation. The legal framework for these rules was later established by the Wild life (Protection) Amendment Act, 2022, which came into effect from April 1, 2023. This amendment requires all individuals keeping exotic wild animal protected under CITES as pets to obtain a mandatory licence for keeping and breeding certain animals listed in Appendix I of Schedule IV.
CITES is a global treaty among governments aimed at ensuring that international trade in wild animals, birds, and plants does not threaten their survival.
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