A Hot One

5 Ramadhan 1437

Walking down the road to the mosque for Friday Prayers some time after noon today, I realised that it's hotter here in KL than in Singapore, or at least it seems so. Gave some thought to those who are fasting whose circumstances mean they need to be out in the sun to earn a living. I managed to feel exhausted just accompanying Noi to the supermarket and lazing about reading, and was even more thankful than usual to break the fast.

Funnily enough fasting yesterday seemed oddly easy, driving up. The only difficulty I had was staying awake in the middle of the journey when I found myself yawning excessively, but that eased once beyond Melaka. I suppose the fact that I very rarely eat or drink in the car meant there was nothing to trigger the desire to have a cup of tea. An increased awareness of just how much one's behaviour is determined by all sorts of almost unconscious triggers is one of the benefits of the month.

Moving On

4 Ramadhan 1437

12.50

Heading up to the Malaysian capital today, and hoping to get there in time to break the fast. Tiresome journey ahead. Another useful test.

23.35

Broke the fast in the car with a date, but arrived at Maison KL soon after. Would have made it comfortably if not for big jams in KL straight after Sungai Besi, following quite an easy journey north. We didn't expect the wall to wall traffic. Not sure if this is a feature of evenings in Ramadhan here. Expect we'll find out.

Now we're settled in following heroic efforts on the cleaning front by Noi. I feel a bit guilty about the number of lizards our traps have eliminated over the two months or so of our absence from these premises. Suppose it's their fault though, for assuming the place belongs to them.

Others

3 Ramadhan 1437

21.50

Felt exhausted in the early afternoon despite doing almost nothing all day. It's strange to observe what a lack of normal sustenance does to the body and, more particularly, the mind. Now I'm feeling the ease that comes after breaking the fast, almost as if inhabiting an entirely different body. A slight shift in circumstances is all that's required to make for a huge change not just in perspectives but actual perceptions. We are more at the mercy of ourselves and our routines than we realise.

Noi has just been talking about some of the visits she was involved in today to meet needy families asking for assistance from the mosque. I'm not at all sure I could cope with the difficulties these folks face. Good to know they're getting help from somewhere. I suppose this is the best way of all to have an out of body experience: recognising the reality of the bodies of others and their multifarious needs and demands.

Still Beginning

2 Ramadhan 1437

21.25

The really irritating moments in fasting month are those in which you momentarily forget you are fasting and the monkey mind considers - just for a second or so, but that's quite enough - having a nice drink, only to be brought back down to earth by the fact that are several hours to run before the thought of a drink can be entertained. For some reason today has seen me particularly prone to such moments. This is tiresome, to say the least, but I suppose I should welcome the experience as a necessary period of adjustment.

The funny thing is that now I'm quite free to eat and drink as I feel, I'm not terribly interested, even though we haven't eaten our main meal yet.

22.00

It hasn't just been a day of forgetfulness fortunately. I finished Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being having re-embarked on a full reading yesterday. A lot to admire, but not a great deal I felt I could connect with. His characters all seem too grown-up for me, somehow. I suppose it's all that eroticism, which seems sort of frenetically drab to me. The bit about the dog dying was touching though (but I'm not entirely sure that the writer wanted the reader sentimentalising at that point.)

To my surprise I found one or two schools using this as a text for English A: Language & Literature. Odd choice. Can't imagine trying to teach this. Presumably the teachers who have chosen it are big fans, but that's not usually a good reason for choosing texts for use in schools.

Beginning

1 Ramadhan 1437

18.45

Will be breaking the fast soon. Now entertaining a mild headache, a useful reminder that this isn't meant to be easy.

20.40

Rice porridge, our traditional first day of fasting dish of the evening, still to come. Over the years we've developed the practice of breaking the fast with something light before thinking about something heavier. The result is that when you move on to the weightier stuff you feel full already so there's no temptation at all to overload.

It's wise to keep the celebratory aspect of breaking the fast in check. Not that there's anything wrong in enjoying being liberated to eat and drink as and when you care to. But fundamentally the month is concerned with building a discipline for the self, and cultivating an understanding of those who lack the circumstances that enable celebration. I remember when I first began to observe the fast the strength of the realisation that was granted me as to how utterly weary and empty the poor must feel all the time. I've never been able to shake off that realisation, I'm pleased to say. I just hope I'm a better person as a result of it.

21.45

Completely forgot in my woeful self-consumption to wish all brothers and sisters observing the fast: Selamat Berpuasa! Recognising one's status as a drop in the ocean is in itself a kind of liberation.

Endings And Beginnings

Finished the very informative 1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear and, at almost the same time, finished cleaning the books in the apartment and my desk and books at work, and all this after finishing my quota of marking for IB for the May examination session.

These conclusions by way of clearing the decks for Ramadhan. We begin fasting tomorrow. Some years ago I would have been very nervous writing that, wondering if I might be once again able to find the wherewithal to achieve all that needs to be achieved by way of self-control. Now I'm looking forward to the month and what it will bring.

But I also know that at some point tomorrow I'm going to realise once again just how demanding the experience of fasting is. Wonderfully so, otherwise what's the point of striving?

The Greatest

Ali's reinvention of heavyweight boxing, turning his side of it into something of elegance and grace, allied to necessary brutality, alone would be deserving of the epithet he bestowed on himself. When you add to that his understanding of the athlete as celebrity showman you have something extraordinarily prescient of sport beyond the twentieth century.

But to have also been a leader in all senses in the struggle for justice for his race and a role model of resistance to oppression beggars belief. And all this done with an exhilarating joy for life, an intelligent and disarming wit and sense of fun.

We're not likely to see his like again any time soon.

Words Of Wisdom

It's a salutary thought that if you were in London around the year 1800 and looking for someone of genuine depth of thought you would have found him not in the Palace of Westminster, or any other palace for that matter, or any of the haunts of the great and good, but in the run-down shop of a dirt-poor engraver, generally regarded as half-mad. This thought came to me as I was watching various politicos score points off each other in the so-called debate over Britain's place in Europe earlier this evening.

Here's something the half-mad engraver wrote: I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If they were wise the most arbitrary prince could not hurt them. If they are not wise the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny.

Funnily enough after a life-time of reading stuff from the half-mad guy, today was the first time I came across the gem above. There's always something new to discover in the words of the truly wise.

Useful Fictions

Started the biannual vacuuming of the bookshelves and their attendant books this evening with the small bookshelves in the living room and the even smaller bookshelves outside the door. There's plenty more to vacuum, but I'm still clearing ordinary work-related tasks, so I needed to start small. Time was when the performance of this task marked a distinctive break with my real job, but these days there's no thing as a distinctive stopping point. The Toad, work, leaks into everything, all the time.

What hasn't changed, though, is the curious sense of fulfilment I get as a result of all the cleaning. It has the entirely deceitful effect of convincing me I am somehow in control of my life. Always a useful fiction.

Almost as good as the assumption that in time to come I'll actually reread all the books on the shelves. Maybe it's time to unload a few?

Out Of The Pink

Noi, poor girl, is coughing and spluttering and sneezing in a way that's painful to listen to and, therefore, must be far more painful to experience. Somehow I have contrived to escape the blight, for now at least, despite a distinct sense that my nose is hovering on the brink of springing several leaks. I'm intending to make Noi one of those soothing drinks that eases a cough in a minute or two and making one for myself simultaneously in an attempt to stave off what looks like the inevitable.

The thing is that I'm technically on vacation, despite having to go in to work every day - where I find myself fully occupied as ever - and this is exactly the time that traditionally I find a way of falling ill. Maybe just this once I'll avoid it, but the omens don't look good.