Ramadan Kareem

Ramadan Kareem to all my friends.

It is Ramadan, and what a wonderful time to begin my second year in blog writing; especially starting with a blog about it.

Although I am myself not a follower of Islam, through my interactions with my many Muslim friends I’ve gathered to know enough about this religion and here are some things that I know:

The essence of Ramadan is to become humble, simple and free from all ill-will, anger, meanness and hate.

Earlier I used to wonder, why we humans require a special month every eleven odd months to become genuinely good and humble; shouldn’t we be good all the time?

In the same lines, there’s something that I’d keep telling my elder son Kevin, and that’s “If you are good, you have to be good all the time, and not just during those periods when we are around the toy shop or a candy kiosk” and invariably he would reply back “Okay Papa, I’ll be good all the time”. He’d also add in saying that he’d take care of this new toy and never ever break it and be a good boy all the time. But as time would pass, he’d become the same little angry boy, turning into Hulk, throwing around his toys, back answering, rebutting our advices, troubling his little brother, so on and so forth. Well, that’s how kids are, aren’t they? And I guess that’s how God Almighty sees us; like a kid. For Him, we are all his little kids and I guess the Holy month of Ramadan is God Almighty’s much bigger version of ‘prove that you are good’ time that I impose on my little kid from time to time.

The month of Ramadan is to be spent experiencing goodness and not to be endured as a pain.

Growing up in Gujarat, India, I never realized when the Holy month of Ramzan commenced and even finished. I’d realize that a month of fasting had ended only when it was Eid holiday. I remember, while in the Higher Secondary School, in my class I had two brothers who were Muslims. Both of them were not good in academics, and had ended up in my class after repeated failures. Although cliché says that bad academics equates to bad personality, I found them extremely fantastic human beings, great friends and true Muslims. During the month of Ramzan, they’d fast, and we’d not even know that they were fasting. During the recess breaks, we’d have our Tiffin and they’d just sit there chatting with us without bothering. Although fasting, they’d always be cheerful through the day, and like any one of us, they attend school; take part in sports and other such activities. I particularly remember that the elder brother was also our hockey team captain and would play tournaments without cringing while fasting. No complaints at all.

Many years later, I was in Dubai, and during my initial days, used to commute a lot using public transport. On one such Ramadan day, I had been waiting for almost two hours at a bus stop on the Al Wasl Road and eventually found an illegal taxi run by an Afghani Pathan. This guy had a weary look on his face and haggled a lot with me asking me to pay up twice a much arguing that soon it would be dusk and that all roads leading to Sharjah would be chock-a-block with the returning traffic. For a long time he went about persistently bargaining, which was mostly laced with ill temper directed at I don’t know whom and what. Anyways, since there was no other transport in sight and since the buses too wouldn’t let me in as they were full, I gave in. Once in the taxi, I experienced the heat from hell as he let himself loose cursing me on finding out that I was not one from the community and that I had not fasted. Later, as we entered Sharjah, he just dropped me off at the King Faisal Street denying any further ride saying that if he dropped me to my destination (that is my In laws house at Al Hazana), he would lose that seat for Iftar outside the King Faisal Mosque.  I got down and walked home, feeling pity and sorry for this man.

I am a great fan of the local Al Jazeera TV and few days back, I was watching a documentary on the many startling opposites that exist in India’s little brother and Islamic state of Pakistan.

In the first part of this documentary they showed events taking place within a training camp in a remote and far away town nestled within its northern territories. There were young lads, barely four or five years elder to my elder son. They had cute innocent faces with rosy cheeks, and in their little hands they bore Kalashnikovs and were shown aggressively chanting some very angry and jehadi slogans, the real meaning of which, I am sure, they were yet not aware of.

In the second part a group of some forty odd tough looking huge middle aged men, clad in pathani suits, some with handle bar moustaches and fierce looking eyes played soothing violin, practicing for the Sachal Orchestra in Lahore.

I was touched and realized that looks can indeed be deceptive, needless to mention, every guy who wears a long beard and an Islamic cap need not be a menacing terrorist and that the least that we could do is to not be judgemental and jump on to conclusions before we actually get to know his heart.

As I end this blog, I pray to Allah to touch those little boys and bless them, to replace their Guns with Violins and save them from the clutches of those men who have bound them. Amen.