I flew on a ticket purchased through Orbitz on Hahn Air, and then eventually found out, after 3 months and 2 long phone calls later, Hahn Air has no airplanes. I was really traveling on Spice Jet. They don’t actually give you a confirmation electronically til you show up at the airport, if you don’t buy the ticket through an Indian company. But all went well on the non-stop flight from Guwahati to Chennai. I have found my uncertainty about loose ends less anxiety producing on this trip for some reason.
I actually prefer how Indian airlines board their planes. If there are two doors, they board from front and back based on where you are sitting. People don’t usually have too much carry on baggage on domestic flights, and it’s much more democratic. Like in the OLD days in the US when they boarded the BACK seats first, so people did not have to crawl on top of each other. The person sitting next to me was not talkative. So be it.
The coronavirus situation is causing problems worldwide. The reason for this trip to India at this time was a Heat Treating and Surface Engineering Conference and Expo that was sponsored by the Chennai ASM International Chapter. But five of the planned international speakers cancelled. At least one was taking the opportunity to present at two conferences.
So at the last minute I got invited to present my Keynote for the Heat Treating conference at a small university in Salem, Tamil Nadu, the day before the Chennai event started. This second conference, on smart materials, was sponsored by the British Royal Society of Chemistry.
It is pretty amazing to me to show up at a place half way around the world, and knowing a few people who I have kept in contact with since my last trip to Chennai in 2017, be immediately accepted as an honored guest. That’s the benefit of belonging to an international society.
I opened by telling the audience that before I became an engineer, I thought I wanted to be a chemist, having had Marie Curie as my childhood heroine. So, a few decades late, I will say that being the keynote speaker at a Royal Society of Chemistry conference is close enough to being called an “honorary chemist” for a day. Drs. Gopi and Gopi, a married couple, who organized the conference, she a physicist specializing in magnetism, he an actual chemist, sent me the below photo of me sitting up there (being stared at) as the center “dignitary” of the event! This was an article from the local paper, that is (presumably written in Tamil) and I do not understand at all!
Periyar University is named after a famous atheist social reformer. India has many social reformers. But Thanthai Periyar (see link at left), who emphasized the dignity of every individual, was controversial in this very religious and spiritual country.
The conference got off to a late start, and the Indians do not, apparently, “believe in” letting people read their slides themselves. And every one of the organizing committee members insisted on personally naming and thanking every one of the speakers. And every one of the speakers gets a full introduction. The organizers always think it is important for the attendees to know how smart, important, and etc. etc. etc. the wonderful people who have come to enlighten them ARE! So it was a good thing the main original keynote was not there, or we would have been off to a later start than we were. I was told to prepare a 20 minute and a 45 minute talk. As the introductions wore on, I eventually was given 2-3, maximum 5 minutes instead of 20, although I did use the whole 45 minute slot after lunch.
I was pleasantly surprised to see so many women students in the auditorium. I was told that the student body is actually 60% women. Yeah!
Lunch, that was another story. We had been told we were going to be taken to the Salem Cafe for lunch, which was where they served us giant Thali platters on palm leaves the day before. I asked “Why don’t we stay here on the campus and eat with the STUDENTS???” That idea was not even entertained. It would have put us back on schedule, but no, they insisted we could get to the Salem Cafe, eat and get back to talk in 20 minutes. I refused to have anything but a coke, my second one this trip. Because once you start eating, they keep feeding you and I knew I would get indigestion from eating too fast. Of course, lunch took an hour.
I wanted us to get back on time because I knew we had a 5 hour drive to get back to Chennai for the original conference. Well the 5 hour drive was really a 6 hour drive. We finally left after all the triple goodbyes, at 4:45 pm. With a short tea stop, we arrived at 11 pm. The student who accompanied us and the driver did not get back on the road until after midnight, because they wanted to make sure that the other foreign dignitary had gotten checked in to the Taramani Guest House at the Indian Institute for Technology- Madras. I had already checked in for one day before I traveled to Salem. Anyway, Indian professional drivers always amaze me how they can stay alert for so long.
