{"id":772,"date":"2012-01-07T17:21:06","date_gmt":"2012-01-07T23:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=772"},"modified":"2025-03-02T12:25:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T18:25:19","slug":"in-the-lap-of-luxury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2012\/01\/07\/in-the-lap-of-luxury\/","title":{"rendered":"In the lap of luxury"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
my laundry returned in this box<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m sitting in Mumbai (Bombay), about 500 miles north of Bangalore in a hotel that you may have heard of\u2014the 1903 Taj Mahal, which was the subject of a terrorist attack in 2008 that made the news \"\"<\/a>around the world.\u00a0\u00a0The legacy of that attack was a complete renovation of the hotel.\u00a0\u00a0When I was here in 1997 (around the same time of year), I remember the crowds as affluent (we were the only non-sheik or drug dealers, I commented at the time), and the rooms in the heritage wing as \u201cdated\u201d and spare at best.<\/p>\n

Florida International\u2019s CIBER trip at the time was the first group that was admitted to the reopened hotel, so the Taj welcomed us with peach lemonade in the \u201cclub lounge,\u201d and garlands, and with the news that we had been upgraded to the heritage wing (there\u2019s a rather spare new wing built in the 1970s).\u00a0\u00a0I think I could get used to being upgraded, especially into the luxurious part of the hotel; it is world class, as I realized when Preejesh escorted me from the elevator, gave me his card (as the team leader for palace services).\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m reading \u201cThe India Way,\u201d which I picked up at the airport\u2014it\u2019s a new Harvard Press book which distills the interviews four Wharton professors had with the heads of major Indian firms to postulate an “India way” for Multinational Corporations to conduct business.\u00a0\u00a0I think my students will be reading excerpts.<\/p>\n

One of the companies, and one you have to discuss as a global powerhouse, is the Tata Group; the Tata group five years ago unveiled the Tata Nano, a real \u201cVolkswagen\u201d (people\u2019s car) with a base price of under $2,000.\u00a0\u00a0It also owns the Taj hotel chain, Jaguar and Landrover,\u00a0\u00a0steel companies, etc.<\/p>\n

I should note that the service at the hotel in Bangalore, also a Taj chain member, was also immaculate. Both hotels, however, have tighter security than most hotels.\u00a0\u00a0My cab in Bangalore, when permitted into the parking lot, had to have the trunk and the underbody examined.\u00a0\u00a0I guess it\u2019s a measure of India\u2019s neighbors\u2026.<\/p>\n

Bombay is the commercial capital of India, with headquarters for most Indian companies (and Multinationals doing business here).\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s on the ocean (the Arabian Sea) and I remember reading early Clancy novels involving the Indian Navy headquartered here.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s about 20 million population, but the traffic, while heavy, flows here.\u00a0\u00a0We\u2019re getting a tour tomorrow, so maybe I will have a report then.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s far different than Bangalore, where we toured earlier today.\u00a0\u00a0Bangalore is a city of almost 9 million people, but less than a decade ago, it had 2 million people.\u00a0\u00a0That may explain the congestion and the state of the infrastructure.\u00a0\u00a0Interestingly, the city seems to be building monorails, rather than expressways, which has torn up the streets, but may be a more sensible first step toward controlling pollution.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Among the sites was a garden, which was a cross section of Bangalore\u2019s history.\u00a0\u00a0The founder of the city created the first part of the garden in 1537, along with a tower that marked the first boundary of the city.\u00a0\u00a0Tipu Sultan, whose history I discussed in my blog post on Mysore, expanded it.\u00a0\u00a0But it was the British who turned a 40-acre garden into a 240-acre one, and built a replica of the Crystal Palace, where there will be a flower \"\"<\/a>show in a few weeks to celebrate one of the major national holidays.\u00a0\u00a0The British, I should point out, recreated a lot of England in their far-flung empire, and it\u2019s relatively easy to spot the old British military establishments in Bangalore.\u00a0\u00a0They now house the Indian military establishment.\u00a0\u00a0The colonial churches are also still in use, many of them in pastel colors. One of the names for Bangalore is \u201cretirement city\u201d because it had and has a relatively benign climate for India, without the extreme heat of Delhi or the cold of the foothills of the Himalayas.\u00a0\u00a0It seems to have been an important center for the British for\"\"<\/a> that reason.<\/p>\n

The founder of the city started a Nandi temple\u2014around the statue of the bull, which I believe is the carrier of Lord Shiva.\u00a0\u00a0The huge bull, carved from a single block of granite, was one of our stops on the city tour as well.<\/p>\n

Talk to you tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Namaste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sitting in Mumbai (Bombay), about 500 miles north of Bangalore in a hotel that you may have heard of\u2014the 1903 Taj Mahal, which was the subject of a terrorist attack in 2008 that made the news around the world.\u00a0\u00a0The legacy of that attack was a complete renovation of the hotel.\u00a0\u00a0When I was here in … Continue reading “In the lap of luxury”<\/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-772","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\/772","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=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8469,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions\/8469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}