Holiday Inn is a world-wide chain, the current hotel is a massive structure. Bangkok is known for its tourist industry and the city and people appear to welcome the tourists. The conduct of people is extremely polite and they are always willing to help. But communication is a problem. English is not popular. All transactions are in Thai. It is a bold sign that an old language preserves itself, but it could be difficult for a visitor without an interpreter. Interpreters are also rare. Thailand escaped occupation by the west and the credit is given to the royal family. The King is revered with utmost dignity and the royal family is honored everywhere. Our Conference would be inaugurated by the sixty-year old princess, who did study Sanskrit in her youth. We were told that the Conference was held in honor of her birthday. This is the first time I would be together with a person of a royal family in a room. With my background, I take the vanity of royalty as an amusement. It takes practice to conduct oneself in dignity in public. Such conduct distinguishes a royal from a commoner.
Prem Nagar has been more than a colleague, he is like my younger brother. We walked out for lunch and then settled in our room. We did register for the Conference through a special desk set up in the hotel. I met Dr Prafulla Misra, a renowned Sanskrit scholar from Orissa. The Conference package contained a well-produced 500 page book containing all the abstracts. I thought to review the book through the evening. There were about twenty tracks with about five hundred papers. The presentations were stacked back to back for the five days in a dozen parallel rooms. Finding multiple rooms for parallel sessions is a criterion in selecting a modern day conference venue. Sanskrit by its history and usage, has a diverse base.
I negotiated my early rise protocol and PN endorsed. Not only he was up at 5 AM, he had already made coffee. The process continued for five days. We would spend the morning hour in discussing the issues about our own papers and the philosophical issues of the language. Normally my views could appear wild, and the scientific basis might not be obvious immediately. Through our discussions, PN appreciated the viewpoint and empowered himself to think differently. Language research needs fresh ideas and thinking. Probe into the origin of human language needs extreme objectivity.
Bangkok hotels are known for their elaborate breakfast ritual. Holiday Inn had a whole array of cooks. A variety of foods was displayed for the willing palate. The Conference delegates had two kinds of attires: the westerns were in casuals as in summer vacation, the Indians with sashes and face colors as though going to a temple. PN and I had no special dress, we were a minority. The food was enormous, the best was the coffee. Each cup of coffee was individually brewed, I loved it. I loved the service of young men and women in the hotel. They were caring and helpful.
I must say something about the young girls of Thailand. Besides being utterly polite, they carry a skin color that has a fluorescent appeal. I was told that the Thai culture is particularly sensitive to the skin tone and a lot of herbal remedies are used to protect the skin. The hybrid tone is possibly through a genetic mix of Indian and Chinese. I was told that the fluorescent tone is developed through the application of turmeric as an embalming cleanser. Old India also celebrated skin tone and made efforts for good looks. The tropics are a storehouse for herbal remedies. Most of the remedies were probably discovered in India thousands of years ago! It needs restoring.
