If you don't have the time or money to make a pilgrimage to the Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, India, to offer your prayer, you can outsource your obeisances to a cyber-priest.

The temple went online in August and within a month received 180,000 hits on its Web site, www.shrikashivishwanath.org. That is more than double the average number of devotees who show up in person every month, braving difficult journeys, the smelly narrow alleys leading to the temple, the security pat-downs outside the entrance and the vendors hawking sweets, marigolds and jasmine, and other religious paraphernalia.

Cyber-worshipers can be spared all of that - and in the bargain save time, a commodity in increasingly short supply for the growing cohort of middle-class Indians busy with the trappings of secular affluence, from attending cocktail parties to shuttling their children to after-school tutorials.

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