Off the Cuff: Getting ready for Ramadan

I am the wrong person to offer advise on how or what to eat during Ramadan because I am snacking most of the time.

It’s the doctor’s fault. He said it is better to eat smaller meals, five or six times a day, than three large meals. So now, my tiny netbook bag, which I carry everywhere with me, is all bulgy in the wrong places with apples, pears and plastic bags of unsalted biscuits.

Food follows me wherever I go, or rather I carry it around in my pockets — tiny nuggets of carbo and proto, if those are the correct words, to munch on and satiate my insatiable hunger.

I am like those crazy boot camp trainees who pay money to exercise under the blazing sun and on the burning sands at the beach, or those people who meditate on hot stones in what is termed as the heat yoga. These people also do not eat three meals like most normal people.

Incidentally, I went to one of the websites advertising the heat yoga and it invited me to visit its picture gallery to see how its facility, somewhere in Wisconsin, is specifically constructed for the yoga sessions. One picture had a man sitting cross-legged on a boulder, which was presumably very, very warm, and he had a blissful smile on his face. He was wearing track pants. I was very impressed because the last time I sat on a hot stone on the beach, it was not comfortable, to say the least.

But let’s not digress. Now that Ramadan is round the corner, I will have to stop carrying all that food around. My bag will be lighter and my office desk drawer will be empty.

Since I spend a great part of my life on my office chair, my desk drawers are filled not with important papers, files or stationary, but with tiny cartons of various teas — herbal and black.

A colleague who returned from India recently gave me a herbal tea called Yogi and it had a tangy, sharp, ginger taste. Ginger is good for motion sickness, it said. But I don’t really need it since I am motionless on my chair most of the time. But being motionless is good as doctors advise not to exert yourself or overstrain yourself too much when you are fasting, especially during the hot summer month.

You will become dehydrated and lose all your electrolytes, said the doctor, which made me giggle, because I could imagine electrolytes zapping around my insides like I was some sort of a super hero.

Never miss your sohour or the early-morning meal, warned the doctor. You will need all the energy from the food you eat to carry you through the rest of the day, he said. Then he listed what food I should eat in the morning to sustain myself.

I realised that by the time I ate all those slow-digesting proteins, I would not be able to get up from the breakfast table. It would give me just enough time to read the morning paper and fall asleep again.

Remember, Ramadan is coming in summer, he said. I read somewhere that the duration of the fast will be about 15 hours, he said helpfully. The temperatures will be high, more than 45 degrees Celsius, he said. So wear a hat.

Wearing a hat won’t stop me from feeling hungry or thirsty, I said, making a lame joke, as the doctor showed me the door politely.

This year, I promise not to gorge on the buffets during iftar when the daylight fast ends, I told myself, as I moved around at the hypermarket, straining to push the trolley full of essential foods I would need for the month.