First weekend of Ramadan, and it just couldn’t have gone past without an Iftar invitation. That’s the thing with weekends during Ramadan; as soon as the month begins, everyone starts scrambling to invite everyone else before everyone else gets invited by everyone else. Don’t worry if you don’t get invited to the walima of that long lost cousin, but just in case you are spending even a single weekend in the company of your own dastarkhwan, that can mean only one thing: there’s something seriously wrong about how you’ve been treating your fellow human beings during the rest of the year. See, that’s how Ramadan gives you a lesson in how you’re faring as far as huqooq-ul-ibaad (rights of humankind) goes.
Being invited to someone’s table comes with its own share of concerns. During Ramadan though, the chief concern, so I’ve realized, isn’t whether you’ve picked up the right flowers for the lady of the house or enough chocolates to not be called a cheapskate in public by the brat.
It is whether your host decides to serve dinner before Ish’a or after.
Depending on this, you take a call on how much sabr needs to be exercised in the first few minutes after azaan, and specially after the first few minutes when you know that you probably don’t want to eat anymore but the mind keeps telling you, “Really? After not having had anything to eat all day you give up so soon?” Trust me, all of us could do with muting that sound, because that is the devil which somehow slipped through the locks and chains.
(Ever think of how the devil might be getting starved this month because people don’t ‘sin’ enough? Maybe the emaciation let him slip through the shackles, but then you gotta go looking for him to recognize him in that shriveled state.) (I’m not feeling that way right now to say that whatever I just said can be blamed on me being light in the head because of the fast.)
“DINNER IS SERVED.”
That voice of your host might as well be the voice of the bigger devil, if
(a) you failed to mute the voice of the devil earlier
(b) Ish’a is still a fleck on the horizon, getting larger with each minute
That night, Taraweeh was a heavy duty affair. I can’t remember if lasting through it was tougher or the getting knocked out of breath during the smaller acts of rukoo and sajda was more paralysing.