Actually I had been anxiously waiting for a phone call from my parents
saying that the decks were cleared for my Crocodile Bank visit. Instead
Dad had phoned to say that the final arrangements for my stay at Croc
Bank were still being finalised and that I could use the 10 days or so
in between to learn what I could from Dr Vijayalakshmi about spiders,
and the unusual use she intends to put them to. I had readily agreed.
Dr K. Vijayalakshmi and her husband both work in an organisation called
the Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems (CIKS). CIKS is housed in a one
storey building and Dr Vijayalakshmi's office is on the first floor.
Here she studies various plants that are useful as pesticides and so
on. But I was not at all concerned with that aspect of her work.
In the garage of the building was the Spider Room-a laboratory of sorts
filled with bottles of different spiders in various stages of growth.
There must have been over 500 transparent plastic bottles at the time I
was there, each one neatly labelled, and all sitting one next to the
other with spiders in them. For air, each bottle had tiny pinholes in
its lid. Feeding was done through another small hole in the lid: this
hole was plugged with cotton. All these spiders and their activities
including growth, moulting, mating and hatching of babies were
monitored by Dr Vijayalakshmi.
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