{"id":725,"date":"2012-01-03T14:15:27","date_gmt":"2012-01-03T20:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=725"},"modified":"2025-03-02T12:03:05","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T18:03:05","slug":"i-have-a-yoga-mat-in-my-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2012\/01\/03\/i-have-a-yoga-mat-in-my-room\/","title":{"rendered":"I have a yoga mat in my room"},"content":{"rendered":"

Associate Professor of Business Administration Fred Hoyt traveled to India for a\u00a0Faculty Development in\u00a0International Business\u00a0program.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mysore in Bangalore<\/p>\n

I am pretty sure I am in India because:<\/p>\n

a)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My GPS says I\u2019m 8000 miles from home, at 12 degrees north, 70 some degrees west, or something like that.<\/p>\n

b)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My body feels like it\u2019s been in the air for about 26 hours.\u00a0\u00a0I know it will get here sometime to join me.\u00a0\u00a0Hopefully soon.<\/p>\n

c)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s 32 degrees outside, but that\u2019s Celsius, not Fahrenheit.<\/p>\n

d)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The main crops are coconuts and sugar cane, with evidence of rice fields.<\/p>\n

e)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Traffic is developing-country level\u2014I spent 4 hours getting from Mysore to Bangalore (about 100 miles), and that wasn\u2019t entirely due to the presence of 4 legged animals\u2014no elephants or camels, though a few goats, water buffalo, Brahmins (the cow kind)\u2014and a 4 lane road that despite reminders that people should \u201cfollow traffic discipline\u201d expanded to 6 to 8 lanes to accommodate taxis, overloaded trucks and busses, motorcycles, bicycles, and the occasional hiker.<\/p>\n

f)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I had masala dosa for breakfast (spicy potatoes in a rice pancake), eschewing roasted\u00a0 and baked beans\u2014the hallmarks of a former British colony (and I\u2019ve always suspected one of the reasons the British sought an empire\u2014for the food).<\/p>\n

g)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s a yoga mat in the closet, and two do-it-yourself yoga channels on the TV.<\/p>\n

h)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I am having a hard time reading any of the official 14 languages except for English.\u00a0\u00a0The local one is Kanada, or something like that, but I\u2019ve not heard anyone say \u201cya betcha.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was thinking back to my first impressions of India, formed 15 years ago, when my family and I arrived on January 1, 1997, and I wanted to know the football scores.\u00a0\u00a0I rushed for the Times of India (there\u2019s that London connection again!) and found the football scores\u2014Manchester United 1, Arsenal 0\u2014at that time, pre internet, it took 2 weeks to find out who won the NFL playoff games (I think it was the Packers with that quarterback Aaron Favre), but it was a reminder that for the better part of two centuries, India was part of the British empire.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Today\u2019s visits reinforced that heritage for me.\u00a0\u00a0For one thing, I visited the Mysore Palace.\u00a0\u00a0Mysore stayed under the thumb of the British resident, who assisted the Maharajah (a Hindu ruler is a Maharajah) until Indian independence in 1947, when the new state forced all the principalities to unify\u2014I think it was the first time in Indian history that the subcontinent was under one ruler.\u00a0\u00a0The Maharajah, whom the British restored in 1799, built a splendid palace on the grounds of the original one that the dynasty\u2019s founder had erected around 1400. \u00a0When that burned down after 1900, he commissioned the same architect who built the Indo-Saracen buildings in Kuala Lumpur and Bombay to spare no expense in building him something similar in Mysore.\u00a0\u00a0Anyone who has seen those other trappings of the raj (me, in other words) would recognize the paternity\u2014with Bohemia crystal, Venetian cut glass, and Italian marble.\u00a0\u00a0It owes a lot to the Moghul influence on regal architecture, but in this part of the world\u2014the Indian subcontinent\u2014that was the gold standard, even though the Moghuls never came this far south.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I read a fascinating history of the East India company, which is how the British originally became involved with India.\u00a0\u00a0The company had its own army (in the 1790s, the governor was Lord Cornwallis, fresh from his starring role at Yorktown), and its own government until after the Sepoy mutiny (the Indians call it the first war for independence), when it became part of the British realm and Victoria added Empress of India to her titles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>Part of the company history occurred in this area when the Maharajah of Mysore brought in a warrior named Hyder Ali, who helped the Maharajah defeat the Company; Ali\u2019s son, in fact, deposed the Maharajah and became Tipu Sultan (sultan being one title the Muslim rulers took). \u00a0The British, led by the man who later became the Duke of Wellington, aided by one of Tipu\u2019s assistants, captured Tipu and killed him.\u00a0\u00a0We saw his tomb and the summer palace he built, where, surprising to me, the British kept intact his paintings depicting his victories over them.\u00a0\u00a0They did destroy his palace, however, and restore the ruling dynasty\u2014who had \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>the guidance of a British resident.<\/p>\n

I guess I didn\u2019t think about it, but India was the target of a number of European empires at the time the Company was making its moves.\u00a0\u00a0The Portuguese were early in the game, and got ousted from Goa long after Independence.\u00a0The Dutch were in the area, and before the Napoleonic Wars, had Sri Lanka.\u00a0\u00a0And of course, the French were here as well, and French troops helped Hyder Ali defeat the English in the 1760s as part of what the Europeans called the 7 years war, but Americans\u2014even not knowing of the battles in India between the French and British\u2014call the French and Indian War.\u00a0\u00a0Now you know why!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note: this last paragraph history lesson is inspired by the Grimm\u2019s fractured fairy tales on Bullwinkle!\u00a0\u00a0Goodnite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Associate Professor of Business Administration Fred Hoyt traveled to India for a\u00a0Faculty Development in\u00a0International Business\u00a0program. Mysore in Bangalore I am pretty sure I am in India because: a)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My GPS says I\u2019m 8000 miles from home, at 12 degrees north, 70 some degrees west, or something like that. b)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My body feels like it\u2019s been in the … Continue reading “I have a yoga mat in my room”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india-2012"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8466,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions\/8466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}