Tag Archives: homeless

A village of tents in the heart of London

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EUSTON ROAD IS a busy dual carriageway. Where it runs near Warren Street Underground station, there is a central divider, a few feet wide.

There are twenty to forty small tents pitched on the narrow divider strip. They have been there for several years, maybe since 2020. These tents house homeless people. They are these peoples’ homes. Some of the tents contain no more than simple bedding – mattresses and blankets. Others are more elaborately furnished with domestic equipment in addition to bedding. None of the tents could be described as desirable residences. Yet they are home to people hailing from a variety of places including Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, elsewhere in Europe, and Britain.

The tents can be seen clearly from the west bound bus stop near Warren Street station. Behind these barely adequate dwellings are recently constructed high-rise office blocks as well as luxury apartment blocks.

Seeing these inelegant tents and their inhabitants, whose impoverished circumstances can easily be imagined, reminded me of street dwellers I have seen on the pavements in prosperous districts of large cities in India.

What is to be done about these tents and their inhabitants? I have no idea and it seems that our politicians are also without ideas about them.

Piles of stones and prayers by those seeking to build a home

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THE PUARESHWAR MAHADEV Shiv temple is about 24 miles west of Bhuj. Built about 1200 years ago, it is possibly the oldest surviving Hindu temple in the Kutch region of Gujarat. Partially restored, this attractive small mandir is still in use but has lost most of its roof.

At Puareshwar

As we approached the temple, I noticed that near it, there were numerous small piles of stones. Each of the precarious looking piles consisted of several rock’s or fragments of masonry piled carefully, one on top of another. I asked our driver, who had suggested we visit this temple on our way to Narayan Sarovar, about these small piles. He said that they were constructed by people, praying to obtain or build a home of their own.

After visiting, Narayan Sarovar, its lake and mandir, we stopped to see the mandir at Koteshwar, which is on a spit of land near India’s border with Pakistan. Outside this temple, there were many piles of stones just like we had seen at Puareshwar.

Although I have visited many Hindu temples in India during 30 years of travelling to the country, it was only yesterday, the 27th of November 2023, that I first became aware of these small stone offerings. According to one online article I found (https://medium.com/six-word-photo-story-challenge/prayer-stone-stacks-a-belief-b7fc0edc5d9a), stones are piled outside temples all over India by people hoping to build their own homes. I will now look out for them whenever I visit a mandir.