I would finish the vegetables first so that I could enjoy the better part of the meal i.e. the meat or fish without having to deal with the veggies. But no sooner had I finished the vegetables, he would say: "Oh lovely, you like this vegetable? Have another helping!" and despite my protests I would get another huge helping of vegetable. In this way I would eat about three times the quantity of vegetables as I took the first time before I finally ended my meal. Eventually, I stayed on in Bangalore for three weeks, returning home only on the 30th of January. I had not met my parents and brothers for nearly 3 months and was eager to share my experiences with them. Unfortunately when I arrived, I got just an hour or so to chat with my parents as they were leaving that very day for a 10-day stay in Delhi to attend the World Book Fair along with some of the staff from Other India Bookstore. So I had to wait till their return to regale them with my tales. But in the meanwhile there were my two younger brothers eager to know about my travels, my neighbours who hadn't seen me for five months and of course my old pals like Ashok who were happy to welcome me in their midst again. Chapter 12: You Have Sight, I Have Vision I was at home for practically the entire month of February, partly because my parents themselves were away for nearly half the month and had asked me to help in the house during that time. Also, I had to re-plan my programme for the last few months of my sabbatical and some time was always needed for replies to be got from the people we had written to. I found that I had completed most of the things I had set out to do during my sabbatical though there were a few areas like honey bees for which definite programmes had not yet been worked out. I busied myself during this time with writing out those special essays of the past couple of months that I had not yet completed (though my daily diary was up-to-date and in perfect order). I also set up the earthworm vermicompost pit in our backyard. It was my dad's idea that I should put into practice immediately the vermiculture that I had learnt, since managing garbage is becoming a problem in almost all households. His idea was that once I mastered the technique of setting up the vermipits by trial and error at home, I could set the same type up with little variations if needed for friends of ours and later for anyone who wanted this useful method of garbage management. Dad suggested that I prepare a large vermipit which would be suitable for any family having a large compound like we have and also one or two small vermibeds which could be used by people living in flats who do not have lots of space of their own. We would keep all the pits going by putting waste into all of them from time to time and this way I could get experience on how the big and small pits both worked so that when people asked for such information I would readily have it.