A month of Ramadan

I have always gainsaid ambivalence to any religious footing; for such mere footing inextricably entwined with subsequent political stance comes as a package, has invoked many forgettable societal hubbubs. However, I have maintained handpicked favourite aspects from every sect & in Islam and the musalmaans who practise it, my favourites are food & music. Their heartily belted Qawwalis and nearly heart-skipping food are elusively delicious.

I have lived through another month of Ramzan. The city acquires an inexplicable glory during the month. Being known for its indigenousness to Deccan muslims in the south, Hyderabad, in its literal sound, has always been a heart-warming place.

It ain't Hyderabad but the full cycle of moon that brings in Eid that kicked the idea. The month of Ramzan is a one-month long prototype of human endeavour I feel. Few souls may be stupefied by me writing about the month of Ramzan but compelling is the metaphor & too obvious to ignore.

I was driving home, passing through the city that has spread a translucent layer of laziness atop itself. Few shops, here and there, were shimmering their brightly lit lights & it looked like a kid playing on his brightly illuminated iPad under his mattress, beyond his playtime. Under the covers so as not to be caught & reprimanded by his stern mother.

The shops were like a strand or two of gray hair on the scalp of a post-25 young man. Here one & there another. Rare in occurrence but apprehensively adding age to a man's life. The month progressed as slowly and steadily as a man's life. With each passing day & night, the number of shops open wide at nights increased in number; like the number of gray hair strands that invariably appeared in passing.

They say a man shines with all his vigor and in all his vitality as death looms over him with only days in count. As Eid came off the covers with itself around the corner, all the shops were lit, gloriously indeed, reminiscing a revered professor with his scalp shining with gray hair, dancing to the winds. 

Koran permits onl three days of mourning, I read somewhere. 4th day marks the beginning of a moved-on life with memories, good ones, filling the vacuum left by the left. People exchange alai-bhalais on Eid, a strange yet fitting allegory of the life of a man well-lived.

And a new lunar cycle begins.

A man whose greed knew no bounds

It all started with the difference between expectation and reality as high as sky before he got into the most formal attire to step into college for the first time. The sky-high difference had only become increasing, if not expanding in all directions like few physicists prophesize about the universe.

There's a thin line between expectation and greed. Unfortunately, the great Indian middle class somehow could never grasp the thin line & has always wobbled with it.

He comes from the same lineage which doesn't respect the virtual thickness of that line. Today, when everthing that could've happened in the absence of that one life-changing decision has happened nevertheless despite the decision, retrospect is promoting reason.

He's arrived at where they wanted him to be. He has arrived where they have always thought he's ought to be at. Only at a grander expense. Costliness seldom is human-driven. There are factors that manipulate the cost someone's willing to concede to achieve something. All such's a part of bigger picture. Too big to be comprehensible for the micro organisms called humans.


However, something deadly had happened underlyingly through all these years. Yes. He too had cultured an indifference to that thin line.

He now sits at a desk that offers a breathtaking view into the green abyss. He does work that wins him bed and breakfast. Of course, he indulges in occasional gala. Except a twist of fate, everything's smoothly positioned and running.

And it took a series of sleepless nights with his chest filled with a persisting uneasiness for him to arrive at that perspective. It'd be prideful if we say he's earned but he's earned nevertheless. Never a single moment was spent all these days to rejoice the distance of the path he's come. He's always had his gaze fixed on an illusory destination. The adjective before destination had taken a tad long time to occur to him in its literal sense.

Obviously, there is ambition. Rejoice has only just been found. He thanked the chaiwala with a warm smile, as warm as the chai indeed & the monsoon morning's sunlight. He faded as the man whose greed once knew no bounds. 

A hostage of the winds.

Early onset of ordeals that you'd have never thought would come to you this early. People hit gymnasiums to get physically toned but he joined one to keep the cholesterol levels down to be up and running the next day. 

His colleagues at work regard him as a man who doesn't flinch much. He smiles if off while the warm wisdom burns within his inner walls. That all this is only a mechanism to stay away from ennui between waking up and falling back.

It's the purposelessness of what he does to win his bed and breakfast that kills him internally. Nobility has always been an unconquered fruit hanged to a tall creeper; so he thought adding inches on his knees to turn taller so that such fruit can be plucked.

The fruit has only been a mirage, Such stark reality is only coming off its covers. It is because it's a refracted image from altogether another tree.

Peace at heart us what he lacks. He's got everything else that's devoid of nobility; in modicum quantities though.

On hopeful days, he reads a page or two from a book. That perpetuates wishful thinking that only is more like a failing star that's way beyond its light years of glory.

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So yes, he was thinking about nobility before lunch. The failing cause & the ensuing rage reminds him that what he does is absolutely inconsequential. His input of a few good hours of time in a day into something doesn't make a difference in whatsoever manner to this world.

Like a melting icing on a stale cake, there are acquaintanceships that depress him to no end. People go out to come home. A home is where people stay while their beds await them. For him, there's a cold bed that awaits, cold to an immeasurable degree. He's got no one to go home to.

One feels unbelonged at some place only when he feels belonged somewhere else. If the 'somewhere else' exists only in one's brain but with no physical address, belongingness remains enigmatic. His heart feels the heat waves of similar enigma.

He longs to be at the 'somewhere else' that's apparently nowhere. He ain't just displaced but he is just out of place. Occasional rubs with liquor coupled with nostalgia come a little closer in making him feel wishful but the wishfulness lasts only as long as his intoxication.

He still hopes that the new place is going to be nicer to him but the frequency of the hope is rapidly diminishing.

He seems to be on his way towards being a lost cause but he enjoys a history of revival. When hope is getting bleaker, history is getting richer to fall back on.