NSTCS-6 was held in Banasthali Vidyapith from 5--8 August, 1996. The Vidyapith is an institution for women and offers education right from nursery to postgraduate and doctoral levels. It is quite different from conventional universities, and strives to attain a synthesis of the spiritual values of the east and the scientific values of the west. The Vidyapith offers courses at various levels in the arts and sciences, fine arts, dance and also trains students in various vocational streams.
For the first time, NSTCS was held in a small place, away from the established centres of research in Computer Science. I hope this marks the beginning of a new trend of growing interest in Theoretical Computer Science in smaller places.
Getting to the place from Mumbai was an adventure in itself. We alighted at Sawai Madhopur expecting to catch the 1:25 pm passenger train only to find that it was actually the 1:25 am one! Finally we got into the 5:15 pm train, where a man fell off the moving train and we had to reverse the train to pick up the severely injured but still thankfully alive man. Then, while travelling in the Vidyapith bus from Banasthali-Niwai station to Banasthali Vidyapith the brakes of the bus failed barely twenty metres away from the main gate of the Vidyapith and the driver had to swerve the bus away from the road and into the fields. All this happened in a jiffy, so fast that all of us did not have time to react. Luckily, no damage was done and we finally made it safely to our destination.
Soon after arriving at Banasthali, we realised that this was a unique kind of place, a different world in rustic surroundings, traditional yet modern in a quaint way. And so it was with a delightful glow of anticipation and a feeling that I would thoroughly enjoy my next four days here that I retired for the night, so as to be up in time for the start of the conference the next day.
The next morning started with the registration and the inauguration of the conference. From the word go the organisation was good and the staff went beyond being merely cooperative, to going out of their way to help us. Everywhere, from food to accommodation, from official work to asking for directions, the students and staff of Banasthali Vidyapith had a very special personal touch, of a flavour which is unseen in other places, which made us feel like we were members of the Banasthali family. The interesting campus tour, the beautiful cultural programme, the marvellous trip to Jaipur and the unique village-like experience of Chokhi Dani coupled with a sumptuous and delicious banquet were all indicative of the famed traditional Indian hospitality, of which there were copious amounts in Banasthali.
The cultural programme included various musical and dance performances, both in the classical and folk traditions. Among the items was a street play written by Safdar Hashmi and a Peacock-Serpent dance drama, both of which were choreographed, directed and performed entirely by students of the Sanganak Vigyan (Computer Science) department. The programme ended with thrilling Rajasthani folk dance (Chimni) to end the evening. The entire programme was an in-house effort by the Vidyapith students and was very professionally executed.
Besides having a socially great time, we also had overall a stimulating time academically. All the three tutorials---Jaikumar Radhakrishnan on Information Theoretic Methods in Complexity Theory, Meena Mahajan on Applications of Universal Hashing in Complexity Theory and Madhavan Mukund on Finite-state Automata on Infinite Inputs---were excellent. The tutorials started from basic concepts and within a short span of three hours, some thrilling results were proved. Jaikumar's idea of pausing in between his lectures and asking for questions led to some audience participation, and one could clear doubts about what he had just said before immediately, instead of waiting for the end, when anyway one might forget what one wanted to ask. Both Jaikumar and Meena had some exercises as part of the tutorials, which is a good thing in my opinion. I feel that more of these tutorials should be held, and it is the tutorials which will make NSTCS go a long way.
In addition to the tutorials, the invited talks were by and large good. The task of presenting advanced concepts and also making it intelligible to a non-expert is a tall order even for the best speaker, but C. Pandurangan (Application Specific Paradigms), G. Sivakumar (Some Open Problems in Proving Termination), V. Vinay (Space and Randomisation : A Tutorial) and others made a great effort to that end, and succeeded in conveying a feel of some interesting and deep results to the audience.
The paper presentations in this conference were all in parallel sessions, which became a problem for some as they had to make a choice (sometimes difficult) between what to attend and what to skip. I hope that in the future there will be less of parallel sessions so that everyone can get to hear everyone else, theoretically at least!
It is sad that some of the invited speakers, namely Ashish Mukhopadhyay, B.D. Acharya and Huzur Saran did not turn up, after they had promised that they would come and present a talk at the conference. One hopes that such a thing will not happen in the future. Also, like in previous NSTCS's, many of the paper presenters did not turn up, leading to cancellations of many presentations and sessions and consequent rescheduling of the events.
The attendance of the audience in the tutorials, invited talks and paper presentations was encouraging. The registered number of participants in the conference was a record high this time, around 200. About a hundred of the participants were from Banasthali, and it was great to see a large number of people attending the invited talks and tutorials.
And thus four hectic days passed off at Banasthali in the twinkle of an eye. The conference was finally over. It was with a twinge of sadness that I bid goodbye to the idyllic place and its endearing people and returned to Mumbai, back from the quiet of a different world into the hum drum of my usual one.
Thank you, Aditya and the wonderful Banasthali family for making our stay so heart-warming!