I was happy when Ramadan began as it meant I would get a second chance this year to become a better person. Nearly six months have passed since the New Year started and my desire to turn into a better me, has still remained very much a dream.
Nearly six months have passed since the New Year started and my desire to turn into a better me has still remained very much a dream.
Over the years I have shortened the Resolutions list from: Eat Healthy, Do More Exercise, Be Kind to People, Be Charitable, Get Up from the Couch, Stop Staring at the Smartphone, to Don’t Starve the Fish, Get the Car Washed.
“Time is slipping by and here is where I make up for all the lost promises I had made,” I told myself, when the announcement on TV said that Thursday would be the first day of Ramadan.
A few weeks before I had read an article that advised that one should prepare early for Ramadan and slowly ease into the new regime of not eating during daylight hours.
Because of my passing years, I wrongly see myself as an expert in many things and therefore sniggered at the article, “How does one prepare not to eat. Either you eat or you don’t.”
But there is a truth in that article about preparation, as you do not go from one day trying to decide which high-calorie take-away to call for lunch, to total starvation the next, staring blankly at the computer screen.
I was taken aback at how some people take the advice about preparation. The night before Thursday, I was at a hypermarket and it was as if a tornado warning had been issued and people had been advised to stock up on food. In that crowd, I saw a petite maid struggling to push a trolley that was overflowing with foodstuff.
Every Ramadan I am amazed at myself and wonder at my mental strength. All it takes is a silent vow before eating the first date or taking the first sip of water, that I will fast for the rest of the day, and nothing makes me waver from that promise.
I see generous slices of strawberry cheesecake in the food display window in the mall. A tired and heat-distressed elderly woman hides a bottle of water and sips from it surreptitiously as I walk by. A boy enjoys an ice cream with a dual creaminess; vanilla on one side and chocolate on the other, and surprisingly I do not keel over and get heart palpitations.
In fact, my stomach does not even grumble once; it is as if I had been on a starvation diet for years and my tastebuds had gone on vacation. I do not even crave my cup of tea, which is strange as I usually gulp down gallons of that concoction of hot water and leaves throughout the day.
I understand that the mind is much stronger than the belly, so I do not blink when I see chain-smokers with yellow fingernails go through the day without any nicotine withdrawal or crying jags, or a glutton behaving rationally and not salivating at the co-worker’s sandwich.
Some of my friends who are not Muslims ask how fasting can make one a better person. “Won’t starving turn you into a Grinch, especially in this heat?” they ask.
I tell them how much lighter I feel as the days pass. I do not toss and turn in the night as I do not eat heavy meals late as I usually do. My life has a set routine now, when before it was aimless.
My deprivation makes me realise the suffering of people less fortunate than me and makes me charitable to my fellow beings and that gives me a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling.
Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai.