With Ramazan just round the corner, it is time for those delicious but equally hazardous deep-fried delicacies
Just a few more days of extended lunch hours to go before we enter the alternately sluggish and
frenetic routine of Ramazan. Meat-sellers, milk-sellers and all other kinds of food merchants, raring to raise prices for all edibles, can actually be seen greedily counting their profits before they even begin filling their coffers. Though divine proclamation intends to promote abstinence and restraint in all matters of worldly things during Ramazan, we end up fully unleashing our gluttonous desires which inevitably exacerbate during the holy month.
And why should any merchant (and there are many of the Shylock kind to be found in this land of the pure) miss out on the golden opportunity of minting money off our want to crazily gorge throughout the few hours available in between fasts? Our feasting tendencies, heightened by fasting moments, unchain our buried ambitions for all fattening delicacies and hence, iftaar time sees people thronging the roadside stalls for all sorts of fried items on sale. Freshly fried and dripping in oil, the goodies await us on the iftaar table just waiting to line our insides with the “forbidden” cholesterol, which most of us normally deny ourselves otherwise.
What is it about Ramazan that makes us indulge in an eating spree like there was no tomorrow? All health warnings and dietary concerns are consigned to the devil (who, supposedly, is far away from us during Ramazan) and fattening new recipes are concocted to appease our hungering palette. Just a few hours of imposed curfew on eating and we start pitying ourselves. Otherwise, some of us will happily starve to get into shape if it means getting into a new outfit or parading the aisle as a bride or groom.
Interestingly though, to pacify the conscience some of us take great care when choosing the “kind” of grease we will “un-purge” our insides with during the 29 or 30 holy days. Standing in the aisle of the grocery store where the cooking oils are lined, I am usually beset with the earth-shattering (or supposedly body-changing) decision of whether to opt for the cholesterol-free oil, the soya bean oil, the ultra-heat treated oil and so on. It is to me that minuscule difference which might or might not support the many “fad diets” I off and on put myself through. While one kind of oil would suit the Atkins diet, the other might be appropriate for the Zone diet and then perhaps why not indulge in the all fat inclusive ghee that is allowed by the Warrior diet which, conforming with the fasting routine, also permits one to indulge in total gluttony once in 24 hours.
In the end, though, diet concerns are the least on the fasting one’s mind as when the rumbling stomach grows noisier by the passing hour, the only overriding factor on the mind is the sustenance that will come at sunset. And the richer it is, the better. The devout fasting clan would be poor research specimen for the likes of Christopher Fairburn who wrote, How to overcome binge eating. Mr Fairburn obviously never encountered the likes of us at an “eat-all-you-can” iftaar offering, or else he would have burned his theories.
Venturing a few hours before iftaar to a bakery or a pakora and samosa stand, is an entertainment in itself and well worth the time it takes to pierce through the hungry crowd in those last few hours of the roza, which are the most nerve-testing ones. But, more on the sights, sounds and smells of a pakora stall to come on a future date.
For now it’s “stock-up” time and lots of extra Ramazan items to be added to the monthly grocery list. Like a fool, instead of preserving one list, every month I write a new list of more or less the same items purchased every month. I wish I was as organized as my dad, who in a very high-tech style has a computerized list of monthly grocery/household items and simply types in or deletes some amounts which my mother advises and then off he goes to the mart with the printout in his hand and his grandson on his knees. How easy the wives of yore had it, when men truly believed in looking after all their needs.
But such chivalry died somewhere down the line and now modern-day working wives/mothers in between checking homework and overseeing dinner (after office, mind you), diligently write down the required kilos of rice, sugar, and tins of oil and then trudge on to the store. After battling the traffic, they spend a dusty time between the aisles so that the clan at home remains properly “fed and watered”.
With roughly three more days to go, and already having delayed my monthly shopping, I now must have a “meeting” with my maid and prepare my boring list, remembering to add the dates and extra bottles of squash this time. And oh, of course, how can I forget to double the amount of oil cans I usually buy. I can never break my fast without loads of aloo pakora waiting to be devoured. The Zone creator and the late Mr Atkins can go to the devil — wherever he may be for the coming 30 days.
Just a few more days of extended lunch hours to go before we enter the alternately sluggish and
