What Ramadhan meant to me and them..

by Althaf Shajahan Moothantevilayil on Saturday, August 18, 2012 at 12:54am ·

I am good at this. The very act of ruminating over the nostalgia of the Ramadhan months and Ids of childhood on the eve of every Id. And writing this over my blog. Can't help it.
This time on this last friday of the Holy Month,near to the night of power (Lailathu Qadr) and when people start wishing each other Advanced Eid Mubarak, I sit puzzled over this nite.
I feared and loved Ramadhan in my childhood. Fear for the hardship of not getting access to food even if you are not fasting  and the great wait for Maghrib Azan. Trying to sleep and wail away time till that golden azan came from nearby Manakkal Mosque.
Womenfolk would start their "Aripathiri Business" every evening. And often on all evenings, you got good meat curries.  The sheer omnipresence of fruits, especially those of Dates and watermelons were vivid memories. Vappa, Umma and others completing recitals of Quran during day time surprised me. The huge crowd for  mouthwatering " tharikanji" at the mosque after Maghrib was great memory of every Ramdhan.
Beyond all these memories of food and others, there is something which this month stood for, for the people who lived around me. When we kids heard the news of sighting of moon, the shawwal pira ' with awe and happiness and looked forward to the fitr zakath distribution, the mixing contours of mutton curry and coconut milk on the ""
Aripathiris next day and the aroma of Atar and Vappa's preparations  for the day, I remember today, all of a sudden, seeing certain other feelings written on people around me.

I grew up in a joint family and my relatives lived around. There were grandpas, grandmas, aunts ,.. around. Each with deep pains, of disease , of poverty, of not having their beloved ones around or some other death which happened then. Those were the days when womenfolk did not have soaps to discuss nor grandparents having lost their control over families. In those hot dry months (it was March April Ramadhan  in this period of my childhood), they used to chant Thasbeeh , do a lot of optional namaz and menfolk was doing "ithikaf" at mosques during the entire day. I wondered what was happening? They avoided Eebath and Fasad (gossips) in toto. TVs went to oblivion. Womenfolk waited for their husbands from Taraweeh while they were deep in prayers late into night. None were tired, to my surprise. Few overslept in the morning in spite of waking up for pre-dawn "beginning of "fast.

And now I recall, when we kids hugged each other telling "Eid Mubarak". I saw that none of these women were happy or excited .Because, for  most of these uneducated and illiterate women, this month was more than the extra burden of cooking delicacies. It was  spiritual cleansing happening. And this was the time of the year,that they felt, Allah would listen to the mine of worries, pains and woes which these women bore deep within themselves. They cried and chanted Istigharah on the Muzallah while they made their "Makkanas" wet with tears with prayers  for absolving them of the sins and pains. The greatest gossip mongers and quarrelsome ones transitioned, albeit temporarily, to this state.  I, as a child,  have crawled around these womenfolk's, muzallahs , confused about what was so much to them to cry about and ask raising cupped hands upwards. After All, these women seemed most happy otherwise. And I remember that these women hardly ate anything even after breaking fast, And neither the men folk or we kids asked them whether they had something. In between the food preparation and these nightlong prayers , I believe , they forgot themselves,


And None of these grandparents were happy, rather many were tearful and morose at the end of Ramadhan and eve of Eid.  They feared that it would have been the final Ramadhan month of their life and they do not know whether they will live for another. They wished for another Ramadhan when Allah's blessings would flower again, The disappointment that another Ramadhan had left them had deeply pained them.

I can read these meanings to these memories beyond the cliched view of Nonveg delights and community engagement assopciated with Ramadhan.  The deep felt regret of showing injustice to this month is deep within. And I bid farewell to yet another month. Ramadhan had become long a  formality and Eids had , of late another, except when others ask for a Eid treat. That spring of good deeds had long been replaced with a perpetual drought of goodness in me.

And I am deeply hurt when on these days, innocent ones had to leave the very city which I live in and in which I lived, for the scare of the people of same faith who are on their deepest prayers in the holiest nights of power in the holiest month worth equal to thousands of nights full of prayer. Ya Ilahi, what a punishment . What had we come upto

And well to add, today in the final Ramzan Jumua Prayers, a old person scolded me in open for not keeping my trousers folded above the ankle. I was speechless.Hurt and humiliated before the crowd, I could not have tolerated a doctoral fellow at a premier institute being admonished by a rickshaw puller, if and only if, my muthunabi Prophet Muhammad (saw) wont have told
: "O People! Your God is one; your father is one; no preference of an Arab neither over non-Arab nor of a non-Arab over an Arab or red over black or black over red except for the most righteous. Verily the most honored of you is the most righteous.". Yeah I am nothing before Allah and that Bujurg would be closer to Him than me.

And Eid Mubarak .. I can hear the humming of "Allahu Akbaralluhu Akbar.." away from the horizon.

The thin cord beyond the veil

It was way back in 2012 February. My parents who had long insisted to meet my brother right in his institute, had 'inspected' his affairs at his place and were brought into an upper middle class restaurant on RK Salai, close to light house.
Well, little about my mother. Ummi , in spite of her bureaucratic leanings, has been increasingly getting conservative day by day. as she is into early fifties. My Ummi and Uppa are respectively the brake and pedal of my family system. My Ummi is famous for her strict miserliness that she scoffs at every major purchase or investment and accounts to the nearest paisa.
Well back to that restaurant floor,  we were attended by two waitresses, surely from North East and more particularly , from Mizoram. Two were smiling widely with  innocence tinkling in their eyes. But deeply engrossing was the aura of sadness surrounding one of them, due to reasons unknown to us. When she was serving, I could not look at her eyes because of this inner agony pervading her beautiful tiny eyes,
While we were busy with the conversations, I started finding something different with my Ummi. She was constantly gazing at one of these girls. And Ummi's face was red , brimming with some emotion (anger??) and eyes were directed straight. I was now horrified.  I realized that these girls were not that greatly dressed, I mean not up to the covering , a Purdah clad Ummi would expect to. Was she going to admonish Assu for taking us here,? All that Post-Hajj conservativeness came up to my mind.  Morsels of food were continuing to miss her spoon as she continued gazing at her,

 We were done with food and leaving. At the entrance , we found Ummi suddenly missing. Ya Khuda, did she go to scold her? impossible , still my Ummi is unpredictable.
I ran into the restaurant  and to my shock, found Ummi with those girls. But what was she doing? She was patting on the face of the gloomy girl. And speaking in God-knows-which language. And I found that sad girl clasping something close in her hands.  Ummi returned with an empty wallet and a heart full Here eyes were brimming, as after every KTV film. But this time the face was brimming red with some emotion enough to break the Hjab  apart, She looked back again and smiled at both of them who waved back .
And we started making fun of her, connecting to a  supposed Mongoloid feature I share from my Ummi, may be that explained the connect, But Ummi never spoke. But Uppa who felt the cord connected. " She is a Mother. And how could a Mother not understand a girl having to  work so late into the night in a distant city, just to earn for her living and possibly for her family. An how can she stand the deep agony which the girl can't hide "
I  was speechless.