Reflections.

It’s the ramadan of 2017 and I am sitting here thinking, typical of me trying to get through the gap between iftar and isha. This gap, just shy of a couple of hours, is often the highlight of the day. Other times, it’s just an unproductive stalemate in the battle of responsibility, punctuality, and desire that we fight during the holy month when we are supposed to refine ourselves. Cleanse ourselves of the wrong that has accumulated over the last 11 months, to be precise. Now, this particular day is more significant than the rest – I am writing, am I not? On other days it’s just me and the world, suspended in an endless debate, not always conclusive and seldom worth it (time is just relative here).

What makes now different than usual? I ask myself this and answers begin forming instantly like threads rising, some gaining mass, others doubling back on themselves as they come into contact with a different kind of thread, emerging strong and confident ready to refute the original ones. It’s a couple of seconds before one of them, refined and dyed with exceptional colour that stands out from the crowd of roughed-up old grays, comes forward. It is the fact that I am now above all the usual debates and am observing them from a safe distance, lest I get sucked deeper into one of them and lose the day’s highlight. It’s a much more broader debate. It’s tough to keep all the others in front of me, almost impossible. If I focus on a few of them, the others start to fade and I have to turn to them, like trying to keep the water level in my cupped hands constant. Eventually all the water will run down when I leave for isha, but the split second when the water level is max, at the very beginning that is, I was able to collect my thoughts and here I am trying to convey them to you, half of them already gone, the other half on their way. It’s the broader perspective, really, that I acquire at times of vigour after iftar or times of insignificance before isha, and when it interacts with my imagination I come up with ways to make it a highlight, like right now.