Issue No. 6: Gatherings At Home, Food Modesty & The Festivity of Ramadan
How we open our home for others
Note: I didn’t feel comfortable posting food for a lot of people with the current news, so I’ve kept all images around preparing only
It's Sunday afternoon here and there’s lots of slow, weekend things happening at our place today. We’re hanging out in our living room, Nabeel is sitting, reading a book next to me, we’re sipping on some coffee, and I just got done with making a list of some initial Ramadan preps that I want to get into, before the month fully rolls in.
At this point, just in case, there is someone who doesn’t know what Ramadan is about, I’m going to do a tiny intro. The issue is not primarily about it, but I am going to be referring to it, so I think it would be helpful. So, it’s a full month of immersion in prayer and reflection for Muslims across the world. It also involves fasting from spiritually weakening things like lying, gossip, excess consumption. For physically fit individuals, you’re also meant to fast from various forms of indulgences like food & drink, from sunrise to sunset. There’s also mandatory charity by those who are financially able. You can basically consider this a holistic detox for the mind, body and soul. It ends with the festival of Eid as a celebration of the strength and spiritual empowerment that takes you through the month. I personally deeply enjoy these 30 days and it serves as a beautiful spiritual reset each year.
Anyway, so back to our living room. After making my own list of preps and a general routine for the month, I dropped some messages to a couple of friends about what I’d planned so far and checking in with them about what they were thinking of doing. It’s really so interesting how as the month edges closer, our phone calls and discussions gradually start revolving around mostly these details. We exchanged notes, took ideas from one another, discussed iftari plans (iftari is the evening fast-breaking meal).
I think a lot of us are so caught up with life things, that sometimes with Ramadan coming, it can feel like you’re just not prepared for it. And I’ve realized that just sitting down one afternoon to think about what you’d like to do, and then chatting about some of those things with a friend or family member, can really create that buzz and add so much festivity in the air.
Especially when it comes to conversations about iftaris because those are truly one of the warmest parts of the month. To be able to get together with people you like, and break your fast over wholesome food and good energy, there’s so much joy in that.
But, you know, one thing that I feel I’ve learnt over the years is the right balance between the focus on iftar and all the other aspects of Ramadan. Because I do feel that for a lot of us, owing to various reasons, sometimes food can become the most prominent part of the month and we divert so much of our energies towards only that, that we end up depleting our capacity for doing much else. It’s definitely taken me some years to fully internalize that Ramadan is a month where food is a connector, but not the driver.
We live in Sydney now but before moving here, we used to live in Dubai in the UAE. We had a bigger friends circle there because we lived there for longer, and as a very introverted person, I’ve always made my friends slowly over time. Anyway :) So even though we used to have more people over for Iftar at that time, we usually always had a modest spread on our table. Nabeel and I would make two or three things together. Even with our limited skills at the time, I could somehow make the best fruit chaat (and I still do!), and he would fry up some samosas or rolls really well. And with this very simple iftar, we used to have the best time with our friends. Over cups of chai later, we’d go for seconds and chat and hang out.
But even though we were fairly low-key when it came to how many things we offered on our table, we still planned our days pretty much around that time of the day and our only occupation would be to eat until we could eat no more. And there was something I came to discover and learn much later, and that was the idea of what I started to call, food modesty.
For those of you who follow me on Instagram, you perhaps might remember I once talked about “food modesty” very superficially and said I’d get into it some day. I’ve had private conversations about it with some of you in DMs since then, which gave me a lot of confidence, honestly, to talk about it more openly. I was just a little hesitant to do that because sometimes addressing a change in one part of your life opens you up to critique in another and what-aboutism, which to me honestly feels like, in today’s times can we no longer share anything that’s brought value to our life, without being perfect in every way first? Because who is perfect anyway. I think “A Slow Afternoon” has made me feel like I can share a lot more openly, it feels more private, and so I thought this month I could chat about this. I know I’m going way too much into extra details, but I do like being more vulnerable here with you guys….still, let’s get back to the point.
So, it was winter of 2018.
We had just landed in Australia to start a new life and I remember this particular moment so vividly because it changed so many things for me. We had gone grocery shopping in our new neighbourhood and maybe it was something about the change of environment, different from the store we’d been shopping at for years in Dubai, but I found myself standing in one of the aisles at the supermarket, looking all the way down to the end, when it hit me. About how