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Temples of Kashi - The Tilbhandeshwar Temple

The city of Kashi is filled with temples, big and small, old and new. There are temples at every corner, and you never know where you will stumble upon a small shrine. There are idols beneath what remains of trees (there are hardly any trees any more within the core area of the city), there are saffron covered forms resembling deities which seem attached to walls, an especially incongruous sight when the idol itself appears to be old, while the wall is evidently new…. And there are surprisingly large temples rising from what appear to be a bunch of houses. The city is sometimes colloquially said to be as old as time, and some of the shrines and temples are said to date back to times unknown, at least the deity itself, if not the structure. Not much remains of the ancient structures anyway. The city has seen more than its fair share of good and bad times. It has seen the heights of grandeur, and the lows brought about by destruction. The city that exists today has grown so haphaza...
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Random Thoughts from school


School is a place where kids go to learn. School is also a place where parents get together and discuss the latest happenings. I am rarely part of such discussions, since I can’t talk on anything related to clothes, jewelry, cooking or even the difficulty of finding full time housemaids! However, on my latest visit to the school, I found myself at the centre of a group of women, all talking earnestly about the ‘topic of the season’ – vacations! Almost every family had been out somewhere or the other – while some had simply been visiting their parents and grandparents, there were those like us who had roamed over India, and then there were those who had been to Europe or China. This was probably the only topic which could induce me to listen, and some of these women knew that I wrote a travel blog, so they headed over to share their travel experiences with me.


Much as I enjoy listening to travel stories, there is just so much I can stomach about the difficulty of finding good food (read ‘food tasting like that made at home’) in China, and I was fast losing my patience, and itching to get away. And then one of the women told us how they had lost their travellers cheques and another pitched in with a story of how someone had lost all their money while travelling. Soon, the discussion turned gory and it was amazing to hear how many of these women had relatives or friends who had undergone some terrible experiences due to ill health or theft while abroad! Soon, they seemed to run out of stories, but come to a consensus that those who were carrying travel insurance were the lucky ones. Thankfully, the teacher interrupted us at this point and I didn’t have to hear anything more. However, the talk did make me think about how people going abroad were advised to carry travel insurance. But how many of us would even consider travel insurance while travelling in India. I certainly hadn’t thought about it earlier. Have you?? Have there been any circumstances under which you would have wished you had insured yourself while travelling in India? I haven’t so far, but I would love to hear your thoughts.


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