Mysureans have taken to walking-for-health habit in numbers that should amaze the walkers themselves. Their cohorts of the city who are now well past the age of 80 years are known to have walked from their homes to their chosen destinations which included the iconic Devaraja Market until the times two-wheelers, three-wheelers and four-wheelers flooded the city, a currently familiar scenario of commuting. Walkers nowadays prefer to reach parks, playgrounds, lakeside and other open spaces, covering by automobiles distances many times the actual distance they cover by foot. The city has reportedly about 300 parks of various dimensions while a handful number of them, away from the homes of walkers, witness walkers with the space between any two of them tending to shrink similar to bumper-to-bumper cars struggling to move forward during peak hours in the land’s metros. Given the unprecedented rate at which automobiles are coming on the roads of Mysuru, the peak-hour jam now common in large cities may happen in foreseeable future.

Thanks to the land’s ancient gift, yogasana, its modern-time seed being sown in Mysuru, all of 100 years ago, grabbed by countless number of enthusiasts across the world, human kind seems to be convinced that its regular practice, of course learning from accomplished teachers, results in health of both body and mind. People keen on turning macho by work-outs in gymnasiums are likely to be outnumbered by yogasana practitioners in days ahead.

The land’s urban residents, leading a hand-to-mouth life per se, being bugged by polluted air and consuming processed, packaged food marked by suspect safety, are looking to some help from administration for better conditions for lessening disease burden, rendering walks and gym work-outs a wasted effort. The rustics, toiling in the fields, away from crowded cities, are blessed with living conditions with their poor sense of hygiene being their main threat to healthy living. Even as the advantages of practising yogasanas, namely no-cost and no-investment on expensive equipment, has dawned on Mysureans, the city’s civic body has reportedly embarked upon creating gyms in the city’s parks, which is most likely to become infructuous expenditure of public funds.

If in the unlikely scenario of maintaining the proposed new facility in state of good repair and the city’s citizens making appreciable use of the equipment, we may come across macho Mysureans in significant numbers. That is more a wish than a hope.