Is there anything else that can be done at Sehri; other than fixing a hurried meal and offering a few quick prayers?
Watching TV might be a good idea. Gives some background score to the time you spend bleary eyed in the kitchen trying not to knock over that bowl of cereal while making sure you don’t pour juice into it instead of milk. If it’s the right decibel levels and the right content (read: wildlife documentaries, history retellings; definitely no news, music and nothing to do with food shows), you just might sway yourself gently out of sleep while not reaching the full potential of wakefulness. After all, you have to go back to sleep again too.
Three Urdu channels. Really, there is a market for three Urdu channels? Instead of YouTubing qir’at (which is actually a great thing to do at Sehri; the flip side being that one doesn’t end up paying as much attention as might be warranted to the recitation), the thought to check out what Urdu channels are around and what they would be airing at Sehri made me shuffle channels. Which is how I discovered the number three.
- A set which has been the same since it was first conceptualized in the 70s to host mushairas on TV. The polyester fabric on the set props may have changed color (wait, is there anything other than green in the color palette; I might be wrong in my belief about color changes) since then, but the live plastic audience remains as unaffected as they’ve been through the decades; talk about a hypnotized audience.
- A young reporter making rounds of the usual neighborhoods in B-town U.P. talking to skull caps and long beards and trimmed mustaches and dupattas and burqas and surma and paan and mehndi and kebabs and naan and nihari.
- An attractive face covered in a dupatta telling you the benefits she got in her marital life (shared with an obviously skull capped husband) from wearing this stone which could be yours too; all you had to do was to send a phone text message.
There are things which are so bad they are hilarious. Beyond the first chuckle, I tried and failed to laugh at this; we are the ones who create and love stereotypes.
I wasn’t sure to be sad at the content which was being aired or happy that nobody watches them.