Mohanam & Thailand

I was recently invited to deliver the keynote speech at an IT Conference in Phuket, Thailand.After the conference was over, they had a team building exercise ( in the traditional Thai way) where all of us were given a specific thai musical instrument and asked to play a short musical piece together.
I chose flute ( which I realized wasn't quite easy to play) and was given the "musical notes" to play. I looked at the notes and was voila! it was " Mohanam". The musical piece was unmistakably " Mohanam" with the notes " Sa Ri Ga Pa Dha Sa" all over it. I knew that Mohanam was quite popular in Japan ( Is that why Shankar-Jaikishan composed the song " Sayonara" from the movie Love in Tokyo in Mohanam?) & China ( Here is my earlier blog post on that).

I further learnt that Mohanam is extremely popular in Thailand and even their National Anthem is based on the same raaga. I became a mini hero at the conference after I delivered a short speech on " Mohanam" and its cultural influence in Asia ! Its a small world.