A month of fasting or fun?
Afifa Jabeen Quraishi
IT’S curtains for the month-long annual “gala festival.” In other words, Ramadan.
Before the festival commenced, we went on a grocery shopping rampage, filling our trolleys to the brim with flour packs, oil, sugar, meats, cheeses, syrupy drinks, so that there is a good flow of food through the evenings until dawn. Then we ensured that our mothers and maids spent all their afternoons and evenings in the kitchen dishing out elaborate five-course meals.
And why not, it’s a festival that comes once a year. There was some talk about performing maximum ibadah during this time, and letting the womenfolk do the same, but that can come later, of course. After all, we can’t just sit watching our favorite “Ramadan special” TV series without a bowl of harira or a platter of kebabs. We just can’t!
The tele-series are broadcast just once a year and we should not miss them. After all, what other entertainment options do we have during this festival! But what about maximum ibadah, you say? Ah, we can always pray year round but these tele-soaps...
And so is the case with the dozens of cooking shows that have suddenly popped up on every channel, as though the only purpose of existence of every person in this month is to prepare and eat sambusas with 10 different stuffings. Each of these shows claims to teach you how to make the perfect futoor appetizers, which of course are good for your health, or the chicken kabsah with a twist, which is “light” yet satiating for suhoor. Simple eating can happen some other time, of course.
This is also a time when we get invited to extravagant futoor and suhoor parties, where everyone is competing with one another to present a dining table that can qualify for the Guinness’s longest table of the world — complete with as many as 10 starters, 11 soups, 12 rice and curry dishes and 13 desserts.
But during the days of our pious predecessors, didn’t people eat less during this month and gave more time for worship because worship means prayers that require physical activity? And didn’t they say the worst container a person can fill is his stomach? Yes, but we cannot afford to miss the mouth-licking, once-in-a-year futoor and suhoor special menus that restaurants come out with year after year, can we?
The underlying message of this festival, they say, is self-discipline and eating simple. They even say fasting allows a person to experience the pangs of hunger and thirst and thereby develop sympathy for those starving and dying of thirst in the world. But let alone sympathy, many of us are in need of a month’s gym sessions to lose the kilos we gained during this time.
With all the festivities minus any religious contemplation, our night becomes the day and the day becomes the night. So we party in the night and sleep in the day, hardly doing any work. But then who works during festival time, you say? Perhaps all that talk about fasting making one efficient and increasing productivity does not apply to us.
We also embark on our non-stop 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. shopping missions, in which we buy clothes, shoes, perfumes, abayas, curtains and dishes as if there is no tomorrow. After all, the extended family is invited for a meal at home at the end of this mega festival and they should know that we got the best gold-rimmed cutlery and the Italian designer rugs. Wonder why then some say this festival is meant to evoke virtues of self-control and humbleness in oneself. Things people say!
Before the festival commenced, we went on a grocery shopping rampage, filling our trolleys to the brim with flour packs, oil, sugar, meats, cheeses, syrupy drinks, so that there is a good flow of food through the evenings until dawn. Then we ensured that our mothers and maids spent all their afternoons and evenings in the kitchen dishing out elaborate five-course meals.
And why not, it’s a festival that comes once a year. There was some talk about performing maximum ibadah during this time, and letting the womenfolk do the same, but that can come later, of course. After all, we can’t just sit watching our favorite “Ramadan special” TV series without a bowl of harira or a platter of kebabs. We just can’t!
The tele-series are broadcast just once a year and we should not miss them. After all, what other entertainment options do we have during this festival! But what about maximum ibadah, you say? Ah, we can always pray year round but these tele-soaps...
And so is the case with the dozens of cooking shows that have suddenly popped up on every channel, as though the only purpose of existence of every person in this month is to prepare and eat sambusas with 10 different stuffings. Each of these shows claims to teach you how to make the perfect futoor appetizers, which of course are good for your health, or the chicken kabsah with a twist, which is “light” yet satiating for suhoor. Simple eating can happen some other time, of course.
This is also a time when we get invited to extravagant futoor and suhoor parties, where everyone is competing with one another to present a dining table that can qualify for the Guinness’s longest table of the world — complete with as many as 10 starters, 11 soups, 12 rice and curry dishes and 13 desserts.
But during the days of our pious predecessors, didn’t people eat less during this month and gave more time for worship because worship means prayers that require physical activity? And didn’t they say the worst container a person can fill is his stomach? Yes, but we cannot afford to miss the mouth-licking, once-in-a-year futoor and suhoor special menus that restaurants come out with year after year, can we?
The underlying message of this festival, they say, is self-discipline and eating simple. They even say fasting allows a person to experience the pangs of hunger and thirst and thereby develop sympathy for those starving and dying of thirst in the world. But let alone sympathy, many of us are in need of a month’s gym sessions to lose the kilos we gained during this time.
With all the festivities minus any religious contemplation, our night becomes the day and the day becomes the night. So we party in the night and sleep in the day, hardly doing any work. But then who works during festival time, you say? Perhaps all that talk about fasting making one efficient and increasing productivity does not apply to us.
We also embark on our non-stop 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. shopping missions, in which we buy clothes, shoes, perfumes, abayas, curtains and dishes as if there is no tomorrow. After all, the extended family is invited for a meal at home at the end of this mega festival and they should know that we got the best gold-rimmed cutlery and the Italian designer rugs. Wonder why then some say this festival is meant to evoke virtues of self-control and humbleness in oneself. Things people say!
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