Feasting, Fasting

My chaperone is ten. He's a boy though, so he'll keep me safe. 'Baji', he asks me as we pass our goat friends and pause to rub their foreheads with our knuckles to their consternation, 'Do you like goats?'
'Let me count the ways,' I began, but faltered. How, I wondered, do I render into Urdu 'cheeky-chap grin'; 'their all-knowing wisdom and frabjous joy'; 'the bolshie head-butting stance that turns to timidity on one's approach'? But reader, know this, that I love them.
'That's good baji, because that's what we're having for tea.'

They live at the back of a school-house. They sleep on the desks and by day, stay in the father's workplace, his tailor's shop. The only furniture is the sewing machine stand. The smell of goat stew blunts my sentiment. I am now hungry and heartless.
Everyone is expectant as the floor-cloth is spread and wiped down with tailor's scraps of georgette. A basin is brought in, we wash our hands. Rotis are thrown down, frisbee-style, and curry is ladled out. Everything changes when I get my plate. It's less of a meal than a biology lesson. Anatomy is on the menu, and such long, tubular organs smelling like, well, smelling like that can only be intestinal. I compliment the pickle.
At the end of the meal, when the children are outside, the mother whispers, 'He's only ten, he doesn't know how to buy meat yet.'
It is my professional opinion that no child, whether boy or girl, should be responsible for meat and poultry purchasing until they have been taught and tested on that diagram in the bio. textbook.

The father sets his alarm for four a.m. as tomorrow is Ramadan: Day 1. It's thoughtful of him, as he'll not hear it ringing himself, he's deaf. So he doesn't hear it ringing now, piercingly, until he turns and sees his children, wife and guest all covering their ears.
Actually, no one needs an alarm clock to wake for the pre-dawn breakfast. After an incident many years ago, when a man repeatedly beat his two wives for only waking at dawn, too late to whip up a smorgasbord, someone commissioned a sort of extra muezzin to make a call not to prayer but to breakfast. So at 3:30 I awake as electricity surges and a tannoy tells us to all get up, and eat food. 'EAT FOOD,' it said, again and again, 'EAT FOOD'. Then, an hour later, 'Right, stop eating now.' Yessir.

Silence, and then the first light is accompanied by more profound thoughts suddenly filling the sky, each man's voice from every mosque weaving together into a polyphony. Morning has broken, the fasting has begun.

Later, evening falls and the fasting is broken. Hunger makes the azan ring out louder. It is somehow more substantial, like food itself. I'm going down the lane after darkness has fallen and it is, of course, a moonless night. A rich panel of star-studded sky gleams so ostentatiously that if it were a woman's scarf, we'd all gossip about how showy it was. 'Who would use so many jewels? Such a shocking show of extravagance, don't you think? Are there no limits?'
No. Not for this designer, it would appear. He's into 'lavish'.

However, I am flanked by darkness unrelieved. For a moment I wonder where the stars went to the right and to the left of me. Then I remember that there is more overhead than sky: the firmament here comprises terra firma almost as high. Whole swathes of the universe are blocked from view because of it.

Between these two hills is my town. I make my way to my neighbours'. These are the folk who bake bread, make fresh noodles and lightly spice home-grown greens. Nigel Slater and his co-religionists would love these foodies. They feed me clotted cream and marmalade on naan, bring me steel tumblers of lassi, share rice with me off big platters. But it's more than wholesome. The kids can crack walnuts in their fists. Sparks fly in the kitchen and not just the linguistic sparkle of hot-headed TV chefs, either. While the children fiddle with the hot-plate wires, it's fireworks.
Most celebratory of all though, is the invitation to take-off my headscarf, hold it wide open and feel it grow heavy with fruit raining down as children dance in the orchard branches. My scarves haven't yet broken, but it's a distinct possibility.

Tonight, though, it's offal curry. I get two kidneys and an intestine.

There can be great joy in fasting.