ABSTRACT
In 1982, the author became a student again after 19 years in order to take a Masters Degree in International Community Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. She found herself with three other students of separate nationalities in Varanasi, North India, for three months attachment to Benares Hindu University, in order to write a dissertation necessary for the degree. Benares is the Holy City of Hinduism on the Banks of Ganges. Known today as Varanasi, in pre-Hindu times it was Kashi, the city of the sun god. Since the elderly had been my specialty and special interest in the NHS and Universities at Liverpool and Manchester for nine years, I chose a study of the elderly of India.
