March 2020 – KNOMO CHOICIUS

6th Asian Heat Treat Event

“I was wondering if I would figure in the post about the conference,” my colleague and friend Shankar wrote, when I still hadn’t posted anything after my return home. “You will FIGURE!” I informed him. After all, it was a lot of his unrelenting hard work that made the event happen in the first place. Here’s Shankar’s video image, while he is introducing one of the dignitaries.

Shankar, on the big screen, introducing one of the keynote speakers

The 6th Asian Heat Treat and Surface Engineering Conference and Expo was held in Chennai, India, the first week of March 2020. We all watched with dismay as the coronavirus spread, and fear and government restrictions started impacting many events world-wide. Several of the speakers who were scheduled to participate from overseas were not able to attend. There was still a lot of great content presented to an enthusiastic audience. For people who are not engineers, heat treating is a technology and an art form that makes modern technology possible! There’s some evidence that early humans were intentionally heat treating stones to improve their characteristics and usefulness as long ago as 45,000 years (or more!)

As you can see in the above photo, conferences in India are MUCH more COLORFUL than those in the USA. Of course, life in general is much more colorful in India than in the USA and Canada and Europe. That is certainly one of the things that I enjoy about traveling in India. Lots of colors and spices are what I enjoy. For those who have not traveled in India, two other senses can be challenging to deal with. Sounds, especially anywhere that they are intentionally amplified, tend to be LOUD. (I had to wear earplugs at one point during the weeklong religious ceremony that I attended in Rishakesh in 2019!). And the smells are wonderful when it’s spices and incense, but when it’s air pollution, it’s not so pleasant. As for tactile, the main difference that I experienced during this trip was that it was hot outside, and one of the Hindu temples I visited was extremely crowded inside (I literally had to be pulled toward and then back away from the shrine where I offered a prayer.) But the conference itself was in a well air conditioned hall, so it was comfortable!

There was even a dance performance as part of the evening activities.

This conference was supposed to be the first I attended in India, but I got a little warm up at the Royal Society of Chemistry Smart Materials Conference at Periyar University in Salem the day before this event started. Indian protocol requires a detailed introduction of dignitaries. We were honored by the Minister of Industry of the State of Tamil Nadu, Mr. M. C. Sampath, who attended wearing the traditional Indian men’s white clothing. Scottish men are not the only ones who wear skirts! The photo at this link is from a website selling clothes, and is not the Minister we heard from, but it gives an idea of this traditional garment.

Soon it was time for my presentation on the Yoga of Failure Analysis. Usually I not nervous when I give a technical talk, but here I was going to be telling Indian people about yoga! The talk was definitely different from the rest of the presentations. I mentioned how the great Patanjali, the compiler and editor of the Yoga Sutras, was teaching that direct perception of the world was a legitimate way to obtain right knowledge way back (scholars say no later than) 1600 years ago. This was at the time when Western philosophers were still completely enamored with Plato’s Ideal Forms, and distrusted any data coming through the senses.

Glittering elephant sculpture at the entrance to the Chennai Conference Center.

The audience was happy to hear that, and broke into applause. One of my major goals had been to remind my colleagues from the sub-continent that their ancient culture has more value today than many of them realize. Well, the grass is always greener….on the other side of the fence!

However, since my return home, I found out that I was apparently WAY OFF, and that Indian philosophers were actually discussing sensory input as a source of right knowledge as long as 2500 years ago. Someone I recently met at a semi-atheist church had called my attention to Matter and Mind: The Vaiśeṣika Sūtra of Kaṇāda, recently translated by Subhash Kak. Indian philosophy is just AMAZING. It has always been pretty much “self-evident truth” (at least to me, once I started thinking about it!) that there is NO source of knowledge that does not originate in the sensory organs of SOMEONE. There’s no other way to get raw data so that one’s intuition can effectively function. But Western science was held back for a very long time due to the way that Plato was practically diefied!

So, any of my Indian friends who are reading this, maybe you will invite me back in a few years to share my latest findings about how to cultivate clear thought! Subhash Kak is an engineering professor at Oklahoma State University with lots of side interests!

In addition to giving the Keynote and a second, more technical talk, at the conference, I had the opportunity to teach a short seminar on How to Negotiate Failure Analysis Work. There were about 60 people, so not everyone posed in the photo.

The woman to my right (with purple shawl) is my friend who I met in 2017 at the last ASMI Chennai Failure Analysis seminar that I presented. She traveled from Bengaluru, where she now lives and works, to attend. I was surprised and happy!

Teaching the Failure Analysis Seminar at the 6th Asian Heat Treat and Surface Engineering Conference

A Royal Enfield employee attending the conference! My neighbor Wayne loves their motorcycles, so I asked this friendly looking engineer to pose with me. See their product below!

Royal Enfield Motorcycle! A popular way to get around Asia!

Off to Chennai- No Wait- Salem

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 Holding British Royal Society of Chemistry Conference on Smart Materials. This gave me a second chance to give the talk on the Yoga of Failure Analysis. Here I am, the only woman on the stage, but 60% of the Periyar University student body is female!

Dr. Bela S was traveling from Chennai to Salem, so the Periyar U organizing committee bought me a plane ticket to accompany him to Salem. They put me up in a fancy Radisson Hotel. Drs. Gopi and Gopi are at left.

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.

Statue of the atheist social reformer, Periyar.

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!

Two of the other speakers, Dr. John Philip and Dr. Zoltan Kolozsvary, are in front, as the attendees filter in. John Philip gave a very interesting talk about smart materials. He is at left. We discussed how he gave his son an Indian sounding name as he was tired of people asking him why he had a British name. Dr. K, at right, said that his MOTHER’s name was Zoltan. The only other Zoltan I have ever met was a man. Dr. K is Hungarian, but Romania ended up with that part of Hungary, so he is a Romanian citizen. He was a very early contributor to the design of nitriding heat treatment furnaces.

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.

Assam Gibbon Sanctuary and Tribal Life

We had a long adventure to get to the Gibbon Sanctuary after a short stop back at the Orchid Co-op to buy souvenirs. This was not the first time I would have been happy to spend more money to get a higher quality of craftsmanship, but it just wasn’t available. I bought one of the many roughly carved wooden rhinos, some Assam tea, and some locally grown Stevia leaves.

The Gibbon Rest House was our destination, but Google Maps (and the entire internet) does not know that this business exists. We did have the street address and finally made our way to the goal, which had a giant yellow sign marked Spot On Gibbon Homestay. But the owner, Diganta, insisted that the sign had nothing to do with his business and he would (FIVE YEARS after opening HIS business, FIVE YEARS of confusing his customers later…) ask Spot On to remove the sign. OK. Ok. Ok.

No. Despite the sign, we are NOT at Spot on Homestay.

There is very limited information on visiting the Gibbon Sanctuary available on-line, and when planning my trip, I had found a traveler’s blog, and they said they stayed in the “Forest Guest House.” The “Gibbon Rest House” was not IN the sanctuary. It was 15 km away in Jorhat. I complained to the travel agent AGAIN. He said there was no accommodation in the sanctuary. Finally, the guides provided by the government explained that there is a Forest Guest House, but it is only for use by the park employees. So I do not know how those westerners got invited, but I didn’t get the nice forest birdsong I had anticipated as my lullaby. I got normal Indian city noises, loudspeaker blasted Islamic calls to prayer five times a day, and reasonably quiet nights, interrupted by the occasional dog barking, and terminated by some loud roosters.

Compared to the views of the elephants and rhinos, the gibbons were less photogenic. They are entirely arboreal, and they stay high up in the trees, like probably a minimum of 60 feet or 20 meters, and they are not that big. So without special photo equipment the sharability result is limited. But they were a lot of fun to watch swinging through the trees. Thinking about it, I guess that means that if there were gibbons at the Brookfield Zoo (near Chicago) they were probably living too close to the ground for their ultimate happiness. In any case, here is a flavor of what we saw. Overall, in three half days, we saw an apparently unprecedented 6 groups of 1-6 gibbons. The guide provided by the national park, the armed guard (in case we surprised some elephants), our hotel owner host and guide all started telling me at the 10 am breakfast break the first day that I had brought them luck. I told them NO. It was a gift from Maa (Durga, great goddess of India). By the end, we all agreed that 1) I brought them luck 2) Maa blessed my visit and 3) the guides were skilled. I was told that there are people who make the trip and NEVER see a single gibbon. In fact, as we were getting ready to leave Kaziranga, a British woman said they had made a brief stop at the Gibbon Sanctuary and had seen no gibbons. So, there you have it. Diganta bought a wonderful cell phone with a fancy stabilizer, so his video was the best. Here is part of what he shot. The male is black, and female brown. She’s a bit harder to see. They are obviously enjoying life.

Since I am still at the IIT Madras Taramani Guest House with reasonably fast internet, I will now upload a few videos from the dancing at the Orchid Co-op. After the professional dancers finished their 20 minute presentation, the host invited the audience. The Home Science students I had met earlier in the day pushed one of their classmates to sing. She has an angelic voice. Then they all started dancing. They looked really happy. I will have to see what I can do later to add the video. The file is too big, and was captured sideways.

Happy Home Ec College Students Dancing at the Orchid Park

Everyone is always taking photos and selfies and videos of everything in Asia. The happy young women continued their dance, and toward the end of this clip, two Western women are joyfully welcomed into the circle.

While we are back in the orchid park, and on the subject dancing ladies, I will post the picture of the beautiful Dancing Lady orchid.

The last afternoon in eastern Assam, sated with my blessed and lucky gibbon viewings, we made a small jaunt to a village where the tribal people of Assam still try to maintain a hint of their old life-ways. First thing I see?????? A Baptist church!

Baptist Church in Small Village in Assam, near Nagaland border.

There was even a (dry) Baptismal Fount off to the side. Well, I have always been conflicted about Christianity in India. But it provides a counterbalance to the devastation created for the lower caste and out-cast people. All sisters and brothers in Christ is more appealing to the Western democrat than the hierarchical system of the bronze age, as much as modern India has struggled to reduce its damage.

We were invited into the home of one of the families. Everywhere in India, people have wanted to take selfies with me. Here are three family members, including two cute young girls.

Assamese Tribal Family. Many of the people of this region look somewhat Chinese. They are considered to be genetically linked to the Chinese, and we are not far from the Chinese border.

Baptist family roasting beef in Assam, India. They are Christians, so they eat beef. There has been violence against Muslim beef providers in India.

I also spent an hour or so talking with my taxi driver, Sarwal, and some members of a tribal “Self Help Group” that had built a small amusement park, complete with boating in a small lake. Like many places in India, it’s not for the weak kneed. I got to practice my Hindi a bit, even though the native language, Assamese, is preferred. These people did not refuse to speak Hindi with the same force as my friends in Tamil Nadu, who mostly claim they do not know any Hindi.

My taxi driver, Sarwal, explained to me that he only looks at Facebook when he is “boring” because he has to wait for his customers to see what they came to see. I tried to have Dharmendra explain the difference between BORING and BORED, but am not sure I had much success.

Sarwal looking down at the lake, from near the entrance of the small, still under construction, amusement park.

Well, I am going to post this already very long post, but will briefly jump ahead to my second to last day in India, when I went to the Arignar Anna Zoological Park. It’s the largest zoo in India. They do a lot of work to rehabilitate populations of endangered species. Dressed like an Indian, I was less popular as a selfie subject, but these young ladies asked for one.

I started getting tired of people asking for selfies. So I told them I wanted one too. One of the four of them took this photo for me. I had been walking more or less near them in the “walk through aviary” at the Arignar Anna Zoo, but was not sure if Muslim women wearing hijabs wanted to be seen with an American. It was exceedingly hot, which was the reason I had my shawl covering my dark hair.

The Horned Spoonbills, and other things…

We really got lucky with the wildlife we saw. In addition to some pretty close views of elephant groups and rhinos, we saw several pairs of Horned Spoonbills, large birds, and it’s their mating season.

Spoonbills Mating Video by Dharmendra

We had three total jeep safaris to see the wild life, and had planned one day to visit a tea plantation. There was ANOTHER communication problem and the tour company left us a morning to figure out on our own how to visit the tea plantations. There wasn’t much going on this time of year, and so there are apparently no ongoing tours. We did stop to look at one tea estate that had tall trees with black pepper vines growing up the trees. The still green pepper corns were plenty spicy.

Black Pepper Vines Climbing the Shade Trees on the Tea Planation

The tiny unfurled leaves are what are harvested to make the tea that is sold to prepare the beverage.

We then continued wandering around and found a rubber plantation, also without anyone to give a formal tour. But we ran into a field trip of a “Home Science” college class. The young lady and I bonded over our pink clothing and my limited Hindi.

My new “pink sister” and her Home Ec Professor. No I did not go down the very steep hill to wade in the water.

And finally, we ended up at a co-operative venture with an orchidarium, and an ethnic museum, which does dance displays from about twenty of the local tribes, some of whom are trying to maintain a traditional lifestyle of sorts.

Another beautiful orchid. Much easier to get to co-operate for photos than the gibbons turned out to be!

This photo was taken with the microscope mode on my Olympus TG5 digital Camera.

Ok. I have arrived at the Taramani Guest House on the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology- Madras. They have blessedly fast wi-fi and so I have gone a little nuts uploading these photos and videos much less painlessly than the last post entailed.

Tomorrow, I am going to Periyar University in Salem, Tamil Nadu, to a Smart Materials Conference. It was a last minute invitation. I’ll be traveling with another person who is attending the main conference I came to India to participate in. So I will have two chances to present my Keynote Talk on The Yoga of Failure Analysis. We’ll be taking a short flight in the morning, staying overnight, giving our talks, then driving back to Chennai to participate in the Heat Treating and Surface Engineering Conference. So I guess it is time to practice my presentation a few more times!