Later, I went straight to St. Joseph's College where according to the information Bing had, there were various environmental courses being conducted for college students. I met one of the clerks in the college office who gave me the information I requested and also a pamphlet listing the different courses one could take after graduation.
Two days later I went to meet Dr Harish Gaonkar at his house, at 11 a.m. Both he and his wife (who is German) were very friendly and I spent a lot of time talking with Mr Gaonkar who is a specialist on butterflies.
I learnt from him that butterflies are insects that are more closely related to plants than to insects. From the number of species of butterflies in an area, a butterfly collector can also find out the number of species of plants in that area. This is because each species of butterfly will use only a certain plant/plants species. For example, in Goa, there are about 250 species of butterflies, that means that there are about 900 to 1,000 plant species in Goa. This information would be much more difficult for a pure botanist to give. Thus butterflies are an ideal medium for a botanist who wishes to have an idea of the plant species in the locality.
Eggs are laid by the mother butterflies in distinct places on leaves to avoid predators from feeding upon them. They hatch within two to three days. The larvae will moult many times (on an average five) to become a pupa. During the pupa stage, it does not feed and after a few days it emerges as a butterfly. It waits for about 10 minutes to dry its wings in the sun and then flutters away. The whole process to become an adult may take a period of five weeks to two months. Then the butterfly will live for about 2 weeks, and within the first few days, will lay only one batch of eggs.
Moths are the ones that spin silk. No butterfly spins silk. There are about 10,000 species of moths in the world-much more than butterflies. Some butterflies and moths are poisonous e.g. the Crimson Rose, even found in Goa. It is a butterfly with wings and a red body. It also has red dots on its wings and black dots on its body. The smallest butterflies are about a few centimetres in size and one of the biggest butterflies is about the size of two palms put together.
At the end of the meeting Dr Gaonkar showed me some books on butterflies and some papers written by him on the subject. At around 1.30 p.m. I took leave of him and left for MES College where I had an appointment with Dr Leela for the same afternoon. There I saw preserved dolphin tails and specimens of hammer-headed sharks.
My stay in Bangalore also became very special because of the Times of India programme that Bing managed to arrange for me. The Times of India in Bangalore has a special section called "Newspaper in Education". One of the programmes of NIE is to have workshops in schools on varied topics. On the 20th of January, I went to The Times office on M.G. Road and after talking with the person in charge for sometime about what I had been doing during the past year I was asked whether I would take a few workshops in some schools over the next couple of days. Although I was not too certain how well I would do this job I agreed because if there is one thing I learnt during my sabbatical it is that one should always give a try to anything new because things are not always as hard as they might appear to be. So I said yes.
My first workshop was on the 22nd of January. I was picked up by one of the organisers from NIE and taken to the Srivani Education Centre where I was to speak to the students of Standard VIII. I was expected to speak for about 35 minutes and keep around 10 minutes for questions or discussion.
I was a bit nervous at first but as the talk progressed and I found the students listening attentively I talked more freely. After these sessions were over I would be dropped back home or to Hartman's office whichever was nearer. After the first few schools went off well and I became accustomed to the routine I found myself enjoying these classes. I was even more pleased to learn that I would be paid Rs.100 per workshop plus my travel costs.
For the talk I would start by telling the students about my sabbatical, how the idea came up, the various places I had visited and the various things I had done so far. After that I would speak about two topics-vermiculture and snakes-because I thought that these would be of most use to the students. Vermiculture because they could practise this at home to process the garbage into compost and snakes because people have so many fears about them.