COME the eve of Eid and the conversations focus, as always, around the ability of religious scholars to somehow sight the moon — even when the possibility of doing so is dim. The explanations for wanting Eid on a particular day may vary, but the most common of these pertain to a desire to see the entire Pakistani nation celebrate the festival together. One country-many Eids feeds not just jokes but also a never-ending lament which casts Pakistan as an irreconcilable land of cynics, sects and hastier-than-thou types. Yet, amid all these currents, a much simpler, purer, reason remains: the old, child-like excitement at finding something suddenly, which has people urging on the celebrated maulana in his suspense-filled discovery mission. More exciting are those Eids that beckon suddenly and the best are those that bring the child to the fore. The problem is, it is the respected elders who are forever holding the reins.

We have often been told about the political side of the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee, just as we know the scholars collected at various rooftops for the moon-sighting ceremony are fulfilling a religious requirement when they ask for trustworthy witnesses to decide the issue. The question quite often is who is trustworthy and who is not and the debate that stems from this can be unsavoury. Even Saudi Arabia, which uses science to facilitate a loose prefixing of the Islamic calendar mainly for official purposes, is ultimately beholden to the ‘shahadat’ or the evidence of a few individuals for the final decision. The difference is that elsewhere the effort to evolve a more dependable, less confusing system is much more pronounced than it is in Pakistan. Once the focus is right and a way out is earnestly sought, the vision clears. The sky is the limit.