How to maintain club rules without turning unprepared guests away

Club rules apply to every club. However much it may rile someone wearing a dapper suit to be not let into an institution which insists that people must wear only a tee-shirt, visitors must abide with the rules. Keeping this exclusionary — members would prefer the term ‘exclusive’ — character of all clubs in mind, it is wonderful to hear that there indeed are institutions that use common sense to keep their rules intact while being more welcoming to ‘guests’. The Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi never turned away visitors for not wearing ‘suitable’ clothes. However, officials will be now lending out saris to women visitors wearing ‘short western attire’ for free when they choose to enter its sanctum sanctorum, taking the preferred temple-wear back once they are done visiting.

Apart from the small matter of not clarifying the option is open for only “foreign women tourists” — the odd Indian darshan-seeker could well be in shorts — this is a fab gesture. The temple allows everyone in and maintains its ‘character’, for which rules are made in the first place. It’s a practice that should be replicated in other places of worship, and in any other club where rules can be such a turn-off for visitors when applied mindlessly. If application of mind would leave the rules intact is, of course, another matter.