• Community affair

    Most shopkeepers and business owners end up breaking their fast at their establishments. Iftar is a community affair, so is offering Maghrib prayers.

  • Lemon life

    When life gives you lemons…you probably forgot to look at the plums behind your back. Of all fruits, it’s probably the guava which is most missed at each Iftar. For what is a fruit chat minus the soft fleshiness with right tartness amrood.

  • You say Potato

    Trouble with the potato is its ubiquity. Have a look at the spread of snacks at any do, and chances are a third of the ingredients would be potato. Baked, fried, dried, boiled. Which brings back to the trouble. Every potato snack that’s local to some place in India isn’t unique to that region alone….

  • Birthday cake

    Yeah yeah, cake isn’t exactly Iftari. But then, what the what when there’s a birthday or two in the family. That’s chocolate and orange and peaches and plum. Yum.

  • Soot Pheni

    The first day of fasting has come to an end. As is customary, it involved a test of courage while navigating through the dastarkhwaan laid out for Iftar. I wanted to be left in a state where the casual stroll to the mosque for Maghrib prayers wouldn’t feel impossible. The time between Maghrib and Ish’a stays difficult….

  • Ramadan Mubarak 2015

    The earliest memories of Ramadan are from a punishing summer. When the comfort of an air conditioned environment wasn’t there. Even coolers weren’t as available or affordable then. Where they were, the supplied power didn’t have enough voltage most of the time to make them of any use. Towels drenched in water were shields against…

  • Minimal: Ramadan 2014/1435 Day 0

    It’s the third year in a row this year. Food shoots chase me during this month like rizq chases a believer. The brief said a clean, minimal look. A single date against a white background would’ve been any hipster’s response. Around sunset, the feeling is missing. The customary excitement which lodges itself in the throat…

  • A Missed Journey: Ramadan 2013 Day 28

    Cushioned by the pillow and mattress, it took a while before the phone’s buzzing woke me up. It had gone silent by the time I reached out for it, and saw through a squinted half open eye that it was one of my cousin brothers who had called. Seeing the time on the phone’s clock,…

  • Full Power: Ramadan 2013 Day 27

    If insomnia has to be induced, let it be for this night, and this night alone. Laylatul Qadr could be any of the odd nights in the final third of Ramadan — 21st, 23rd, 25th, 27th or 29th. Nobody knows for sure, and nobody probably ever will. After all, even the Prophet (SAW) never said…

  • Dates and Salaah: Ramadan 2013 Day 25

    After two days of breaking the fast in a ‘non-Iftar-dastarkhwaan’ setup (first day of the shoot, and the Azaan alarm on the phone app went off as I was pressing the camera shutter, while on the second day, I was in the middle of evening hour office traffic searching for an auto to take me…