The Holy Month's Crescent Shows Up!

Groping in the dark, around the circle of her life, days after days, weeks after weeks, months after months, carrying along her luggage of sins, iniquity and guilt with the feeling that it was weighing her down with every stride, she stepped inside this discrete month. It was brightly illuminated, substantially sparkling vividly with its luminosity and teeming with its boons and blessings, ready to take away her culpable, hefty luggage from her and where she could easily sought refuge from the sins. A sanctuary. Once having entered, who would possibly want to leave this divinely illuminated room without benefiting oneself to the greatest extent?

She had stepped inside this month called Ramadan.

"Ramadan moon has been sighted in Pakistan and the muslims of Pakistan will observe their first roza tomorrow."

I get to hear this statement once a year and it has never failed to send a little quiver of excitement and happiness up my spine until now.

Sculpting my feelings into a sentence, as simply as it can get, I can only say that I love Ramadan. Despite the fact that I’m a big time foodie and that I can hardly go an hour without stuffing my mouth, I still have a specific reverence for this month. Now it can be a mere natural Muslim instinct or a holy diversion from the rest of the monotonic months of the year. Whatever might be the reason, it makes me a happy person. Having to wake up and eating at an inky black time and holding back my hunger till the dusk would sound next to impossible for my insatiable appetite, during the rest of the year. But in Ramadan, it sounds so normal to me. It seems like Allah thrusts upon you the blessing of remaining patient throughout the day while you are fasting.

Blessing; a beautiful word having a beautiful meaning. One of the problems of paramount importance is that we take this word for granted. Instead of purifying our souls by breathing in the sacred atmosphere of Ramadan, we take it as a mere religious responsibility, completely turning an irreverent attitude towards the holy month’s blessings and boons it brings along with it.

Allah is the kindest of all. My mom always says that Allah wants to omit His people’s sins by the great downpour of these little blessings that could help them raise the level of their good deeds higher. Having the ability to perceive these blessings, in order to devote ourselves to be a part of it, is a blessing in itself. Not everyone has this ability. People turn a blind eye towards it, unknowingly getting themselves deprived of those godsends. Obliviousness is a misfortune. Trying to gain the best you can from this overloaded phase of blessings is the greatest present you can give to your soul. This must be our Ramadan resolution.

I’m so ready for collecting these blessings and munching on the savory Ramadan delights.

By the way, isn't getting to sniff the smell of scrumptious iftari after the whole day of starvation counted as a blessing as well? Yeah, exactly! We owe a super great deal of thanksgiving to Allah!

Happy Ramadan guys!

...And He Watched Her Go

She looked at the big round clock hanging on the wall as she bent down a little to serve a hot cup of coffee with a muffin to a customer sitting beside the window. The window was showing a clear view of the road outside the cafe. It was half past four. “Thirty more minutes and my working hours would be over”, she thought to herself. As she straightened her back, putting the tray down on the table, she tried to steal a glance of the outside through the window. Her eyes searched for the same tall sturdy figure she had been seeing there daily for almost a week now but she couldn’t find him. After making sure that every customer had had what they ordered for, she positioned herself on a chair that was located in a corner and waited for the remaining half hour to pass. Unintentionally playing with a small thread that had come out of the seam of her apron, she pictured his face.

He was standing in his room looking down, through the half opened window, at the garden that was adorned with colourful flowers. Mentally complementing those beautiful flowers, he smiled as her picture drew before his eyes. He was dressed up informally in subtle blue denim and a plain, off-white, appropriately fitted t-shirt. Over the t-shirt a plain yet graceful, black, unbuttoned coat draped his strong, sturdy figure. After giving a few moments of observance to the garden, he pulled his hand from his trouser's pocket, checked the time on his Rolex and walked towards the middle end of his room where a full length mirror was situated. His tall figure stopped in front of the mirror at an angle that was perfect for him to see himself from his prim dark hair to his shiny, black leathered shoes. With his eyes scrutinizing his image in the mirror, he grasped the collars of his coat, gave them a little jerk, dusted off a crease from the right sleeve of his coat and headed himself out of the room. Through the hallway he walked out to the garden and ultimately to his convertible that was parked in the garage, seated himself elegantly on the driver’s seat and drove off.

The music that was playing in his car stopped abruptly as he parked his car on the road, opposite to where the cafe was located. He came out of the car and stood there leaning against it, spontaneously looking at the cafe’s door and checking the time on his watch after every minute. “I would talk to her, today”, he whispered to himself. He looked down at his watch for the last time before gazing up at the cafe’s door to see a beautiful, delicate figure coming out of it. Breathless and wonderstruck, he stood there like a statue and let his eyes breath in whatever they could in just enough time for him as long as she remained in his sight. It was her! The same dark eyed cafe girl with delicate features and peachy complexion. Gorgeously attired in a pink floral blouse and dark blue skinny jeans, she paced down the 3 stepped stairway of the cafe. Her hair bounced perfectly as she walked down the stairs of the cafe. She was beautiful, he thought. “I would definitely talk to her”, he whispered to himself once again.

When he saw her coming, he noticed that her pace was so flawless, it looked like every step she took was precisely measured. Why do people think nobody is perfect? She was perfect. Flawless. Everything about her was so far from fault that a little feeling of denial, like an ivy plant, started to climb over his confidence. Everything he thought about saying to her just flew away out of his mind and vanished into thin air. He thought maybe his words would not be enough. He did not want to lose her before even winning her. She was so beautiful, maybe too beautiful for him. The rejection fright growing deep down inside him kept him from mustering all the courage that was needed to mold his feeling into words.

She tried to catch a sight of him while leaving the cafe’s boundary to come to the other side of the road where he was standing. She managed to cross the road, finding her way between the moving vehicles, and hauled herself nearer to where his black convertible was parked. “Maybe he would talk to me today”, she hoped and kept walking towards him, occasionally trying to catch his glimpse. One more step and she was now standing opposite to him with her right side facing him.

She could not help moving her face to take a proper look at his charming personality.

A tall young man. Masculinity at its summit with his cropped hair daintily trimmed and sophisticatedly combed. His rigid clean-shaven square face, with jaw lines contoured at sharp impeccable angles, was too charismatic to be ignored. Prim features perfectly placed on his wheatish skin. Thick dark eye brows and profound dark brown eyes with their gaze so wonderfully, sharply and adorably piercing that could easily flip any girl’s heart over. His slender nose was perfectly the size that suited his face and there was a very small, almost invisible, mole on its tip. He had a unique smile which tilted the left corner of his lips. Nobody could ignore the fact that he was extremely attractive.

Her heart skipped a beat and did a somersault instead.

He felt her demure gaze upon him and it made him gasp, his spontaneous inner sensation. How could anyone be this beautiful? His mind went numb. Dark brown eyes with long curled eyelashes, took his breath away. Wavy layered hair fell perfectly on her shoulders. He was completely bewitched by her beauty, like one gets fascinated by a colourful and enthralling fireworks display. Her twinkling eyes stared at him with a bashful gaze while her little key shaped earrings dangled with the movement of her neck. Her personality overflowed with a great deal of noticeable features that it seemed impossible to grasp her flawlessness in just one glance.

His heart did a few irregular fluttering beats.

But she could not stand there forever. She only broke her pace for a mere time period of five seconds. Those five seconds that helped her absorb whatever she could about him. Like every past day, he did not utter a word. “He was a charming rich guy, why would he fall for a cafe girl like her?”, these words echoed in the back of her head. She snapped herself out of the aura his charming personality was radiating, jerked her neck a little, set her eyes on the ground, nervously tucking her hair behind her ear, and walked past him to the bus stop that was a few steps away from her now to wait for the bus that was coming from the other end of the road.

Far away from knowing that she felt the same way about him, he, along with his self-designed apprehensions, stood there motionless, and watched her go.

It's Hot. Oh-so-hot!

Mr. Sun! Could you please try to contain your hotness?

It is so HOT! I’d probably catch fire from this heat.

It is so hot that if I were a laptop’s battery, I would overheat and stop working.

It is so freaking hot that if I were water, I would evaporate up in the sky.

It is so hot that if I were an egg, I would hatch out.

If this weather were a food, people would spend forever blowing on it before it was palatable enough to eat.

..And if it were an oven, you could practically bake burn a cake in it.

Ok, this is getting lame. Basically, I’m whining and I got a pretty good reason behind my whiny jabber.

The heat is so insanely, outrageously wild therefore I must whine!

This heat looks like it has come all the way from the sun with only one goal; to make all the earthlings pass out with its hotness. Although its mission-swoon-the-Homo sapiens is going pretty well, still, somehow, I’m conscious and surviving with just enough level of energy that is allowing me to type my whiney yap out.

This is the sort of heat that makes a foodie, like me, want to avoid lunches and dinners and breakfasts. Why? You may ask.. Because steaming hot food in stifling hot weather is definitely a turn off for my appetite. Even then, I did not miss my breakfast today and although this same weather-effected unappealing sensation did make me utter this announcement in front of my family that I would not be seen at the lunch table today, even then I was found there. Why? You may ask.. Because I cannot skip my meals. Yes I’m sure it definitely would help you get an excellent idea about my veracious personality. (Ok, don’t get confused, that was sarcasm!) I’m also, most certainly, to be seen at the dinner table tonight, gobbling up my dinner and whining out my weather stricken rant.

My god, it is thermometer-bursting-and-mercury-spilling-out-of-it HOT!

This is the kind of heat that made me want to grab a nail polish remover for my black painted toenails as somehow 46 degrees of heat made that black color look extremely displeasing to my eye.

It’s that weather when you want to follow only one hairdo throughout the season. The bun! And, if you are gifted with the slightest ability of perception, you must have, most definitely, understood at once that I’m not talking about the glamorous bun here. This kind of bun means gathering all of your hair into a super high ponytail and then doing some twisting and swirling until it forms a bun.

Guys are so lucky. Less hair, less fuss!! And if they are bald, that’s even more of a blessing for them. No hair, absolutely no fuss!!

Even the fan above my head isn’t helping much. It only helps in swishing your dupatta and whirling your hair. And that pretty much seems to be its purpose.

Basically this is the sort of weather that drenches you in sweat and you look like a wreck. A weather-stricken wreck. Or a labor that comes home after a long tiring day of manual work.

Dad’s getting UPS installed in our house as the load shedding hours have gone insanely crazy. I didn’t know what this acronym stood for so I looked up for it on Google. Lesson of the day! UPS stands for Uninterrupted Power Supply.

This is actually not true, the power supply does get interrupted when the battery discharges out completely.

I’m living among a misleading throng of liars.

Oh and by the way, the weather is so hot that if it were a guy, I would undeniably fall head over heels for him.