To bottu or not to bottu?

               

I went through a hassle-free security check at the airport in India and at Bangkok immigration. 

The security system at Thailand doesn’t comprise frisking at any of its airports. Your luggage is scanned, and then you are let through a metal-detector. 

On one of their domestic flights, however, after I passed through the door, I was called aside by the female security personnel, frisked and then let through. I was the only one there with a bottu on my forehead. 

I was wondering how many of the security people understand this bottu culture of South India and that Hindus, identified by their bottu, normally do not give reason for suspicion at airports. 

As a South Indian, I was reluctant to do away with the bottu that I am used to from my birth. But, I did remove it, and then onwards I wasn’t stopped or questioned in any of the Thailand airports. 

It went back on through the duration of the trip but at airports, it came off.

So, on the last leg of my journey from Bangkok to Hyderabad, I was bottu-less. 

Okay, as a prelude, I am fair-complexioned, but I wasn't aware how it would, in combination with the bottu-less state, give rise to these interesting occurrences…

1) At the immigration center, I am asked my nationality as an answer to my query on filling the immigration forms.

2) A woman at the airport exit asking me if I was interested in foreign exchange.

3) The taxi driver asking me in English where I wanted to go.

A foreigner in foreign countries anyway, and in your own too?

So, to bottu or not to bottu?