There is something about calling up Amma and Abba right after Maghreb prayers have been offered.
Maghreb has always been that one prayer of the day which signifies that a long day spent in working for a living is coming to an end. May not necessarily be as aptly applicable given the ways in which we work now, across time zones and trespassing what used to be known earlier as self imposed boundaries of human etiquette. Irrespective of spending long years hidden inside corporate cubicles, I always felt Maghreb had that quality of bringing closure to a day.
Today, it had an absolute opposite quality. Of a beginning. The month of Ramadan. Which made speaking with folks even more special. The manner in which an entire lifetime of happiness and success is bestowed upon a child as a prayer in a single breath simply beats all laws of physics, present and future.
***
Post Maghreb, the need for a quick bite, and I moved to a fast food joint nearby. A bit of a surprise for me there, in the manner of two females (veiled in the niqab) along with two boys, who were engaged quite actively in an argument with the man behind the counter. It didn’t take too much of an eavesdropping to figure out that they were speaking in Arabic, and the outward behavior of the boys immediately gave out that they were from the Gulf, most possibly Saudi. Not that they were being rude (and yes, those who’d know, would agree that some Gulf kids are the rowdiest lot you’d ever come across), it was more the somewhat rustic manner joined with a certain naivete which gave them off as Saudi.
Normally I tend to stay clear of any such disagreements in public spots (kyun kisi ke phadde main taang daalo?), however the nature of the situation made me get up and reach out to the somewhat helpless lot. The boys were young, like 12-13 year olds, the women were veiled and from a part of the world where they aren’t expected or allowed to deal with men in a public sphere. The poor kids were just lost. And nobody around was making it any easy for them. A quick Salaamaleik to win their attention, and subsequent trust, and the situation was resolved amicably. The bunch was in fact from Saudi (yes, I was right), Al Khobar to be precise, and the elder boy was pleased with an ear to ear grin after the issue got solved, and tried making some talk about Ramadan beginning tomorrow, by when their order was ready and they had to leave. I learned later that they were apparently here to get the man of their house operated for paralysis of the body waist downwards. Sad yes, and I would have really wanted to speak to them more and see if I could have helped. That aside, the reason of my mentioning this as a surprise was the seeming association that we as Muslims have with the state of Saudi for the fact of it housing two of the holiest sites, which we call Masjid al Haram (the places of inviolable worship), and that I spot a Saudi family as soon as Ramadan begins. Spotting a Saudi family out on the streets in Delhi has almost as high a probability as a blue moon caving into mother earth. So I just wondered, should I be considering this as some kind of a sign or just a fluke? Maybe the former, because I’ve been proved wrong whenever I’ve taken up the latter choice after being apprehended by anomalies which have some form of an affinity with my designed environment in the course of the normal passage of events.
Don’t ask me – a sign for what? If I knew that I wouldn’t have written this.