Seema is a lawyer who spends most of her day attending courtroom proceedings and preparing for them in lawyers’ chambers. Here she shares how she goes about fasting in the midst of leading the ‘normal’ professional life she is used to during the rest of the year. This just reminded me of a similar time when I was in ‘regular’ jobs, and it would surely resonate with those of you with jobs. You can find her at @saima2000.
“Sorry, I am fasting.”
This is the usual answer I give when I am offered dhokla, samosa, chai while sitting in conferences and preparing for the next day’s cases. People look at me with their eyes as if telling me “oh, poor her.” Yes, I often break fast in my cubicle, or dash out of the conference at the nick of time, pop a khajoor and get back to work. Well, there are times when I get to eat more than I can digest, usually it’s after an hour of the iftaar time.
Often, when wearing a coat, a band and a gown in the horrible Delhi heat, I have to literally push past the overwhelmingly large crowd of lawyers in the Supreme Court of India and reach the court room just in time for my case. Even when I do reach, there is never a place to stand, let alone sit. This is when I feel like telling someone to get up and let me sit, because I am fasting. But I don’t. Never have, never will. After all, isn’t Ramazan also about testing our level of tolerance.
Ramazan isn’t just about fasting and praying more. It teaches us to control our urges, the urge to pick up anything to eat while passing the Court canteen, or the urge to pick up that bottle of water when your throat is horribly parched or the urge to over indulge in social networking websites or the urge to have lengthy pointless conversations on phones, coffee shops, BBM, whatsapp. It teaches us to concentrate on ourselves and Him and not on others. It teaches us to get our priorities right.
It also teaches us to think about those, who observe their Ramazan the rest of the eleven months, irrespective of their religion.