Hunger.

This was written by a friend, and i thought it was so spot on I had to share. She's managed to articulate what I've been thinking and feeling. Enjoy.



It is Ramadhan.
I'm not the sort who really talks about these kinds of things. Religious things, matters of belief. Not in any kind of concrete way, in any case. I don't really discuss my belief in a deity, my visions of heaven and/or hell, or even whether I believe in them. I'm not really that way inclined. I don't hide it - as soon as you look at me it's fairly obvious what faith I follow. But I don't talk about the nitty-gritty. For me, it's very personal. I don't like to make an issue of my beliefs, I don't want you to feel as though I'm attacking yours and I certainly don't believe in trying to 'convert'.
So it's unusual for me to write something like this.
During Ramadhan, Muslims aren't supposed to eat or drink between the hours of sunrise and sunset. Or at least, that's the general perception. Now, the reasons are many. Partly, it's to experience the hunger and thirst that many people feel every day. Partly, it's to increase will-power. And, partly, it is mental to be a symbol of self-sacrifice, our attempt at asceticism. For a month you forget your carnal pleasures (for what is more carnal than food?) and you pursue 'higher' experiences. One is encouraged to aim for spiritual perfection, and, with it, nearness to God. How you attain it is, of course, highly personal. Some pray. Some read. Some meditate. The paths to spirituality are many; the goal, however, is singular.
Or so we like to think. For I believe, as I have for many years, that we have lost sight of the goal. The goal now is a dinner which will provide all the calories you've denied yourself throughout the day. The fast? A means to an end. An excuse to gorge, to be seduced by plates piled high with sweet, fattening delights.
I'm a firm believer in abstinence during Ramadhan. I'm not some kind of joyless Puritan, but I do believe that if you wish to cleanse your mind, or your spirit, you must first cleanse your physical being. For many thousands of years people have denied themselves that which they crave in order to attain a higher state of being. Separation from worldly desires allows one to experience altered perceptions.

Every year, I hope to gain something from the fasting. The hunger isn't important to me; I can deal with the thirst. But I don't want to do it for a month and feel nothing change inside me. I'm not one for religious dogma; to me the essence is deeper than that.
But.

It's quite common to be invited for dinner during Ramadhan. My first (and so far only) invitation was last weekend. It was a big thing - there must have been some eighty people there. So, after the requisite prayers, we ate. It's a vision I've seen many times and I hope to never see again.

There's something about being hungry that makes you grab every edible thing in sight. I understand that. I suffer from ‘eyes bigger than mouth’ syndrome. But, come Ramadhan, I try to stop it. I change my eating habits. There is something decidedly unhealthy about starving yourself all day and then devouring a mountain of deep-fried goods. It’s something I refrain from. I believe it’s more than one’s digestive system can deal with. It’s easy for me because I actually don’t like eating fried food. I accept that it is difficult for other people to abstain. My equivalent to fried food is probably something cake-ish.

So for me, an average meal in Ramadhan will consist of tea, fruit and a small plate of something substantial. I aim to subsist on as little as I possibly can, not in an attempt, to shed weight (decidedly NOT the point of the fasting) but in an effort to retrain my body, to teach it, and myself, that a life of excess and instant gratification is not the reason we exist. But, of course, we live lives of instant gratification. ‘I want’ regularly leads to ‘I get’. And we have no sense of the privilege of that situation. If I want calorific chocolate cake I can have it delivered to me in twenty minutes. I don’t need to work for it; I don’t need to earn it. I demand, and my demand is honoured.

Back at dinner, I saw what appeared to be a mob diving for food. Pastries, cutlets, spring rolls, chicken, lamb, bread, rice. No queues, no one waving someone ahead of them. Just people scrambling to the front. And not just for something to take the edge off the hunger pangs.

I imagine it’s been exacerbated by my recent trip, but I could hardly bear the sight of such privileged, comfortable people diving for spring rolls. I don’t understand how one can remain hungry for sixteen hours, perhaps more, and then lose all self-control the moment they see something edible. How can you lose your restraint like that? I caught myself thinking, as I have before, about our animalistic traits. Manners fly out of the window. We eat as though we will never eat again, as though we need to shove as much inside ourselves as we possibly can to survive the next day.

But in this we lose sight of one of the reasons for the fast – to remember those who don’t have food. Many people, prior to Ramadhan, will donate money to provide food for those who would otherwise go hungry. It’s an admirable thing to do, though I wonder who feeds those people during the other eleven months of the year. But feeding a hungry person isn’t enough. It doesn’t give you a license to forget about them and seek to satisfy only your own physical self.

And fasting isn’t about being hungry. Not really. It’s about learning to appreciate those things we take for granted. It’s not about going out for an expensive dinner and then walking past the hungry, cold homeless person sitting in the next doorway. It’s about self-sacrifice, it’s about empathy with other people, it’s about becoming more humane.

But we’ve forgotten all that. And we are the losers. We’ve forgotten that if you wish to attain spiritual enlightenment you need to do a bit more than skip breakfast and lunch.

God help us.




(By M.R)