Ramadan Blogging: Day 1

First day of Ramadan is always the hardest. It takes time to to get accustomed to abstaining from eating and drinking during the daytime and I am constantly on alert lest I may eat something accidentally. Hunger and thirst is not much of an issue especially here in California. I remember as a kid the month of Ramadan in India used to occur bang in the middle of May-June. The heat in North India is sweltering during those days and on top of that, power cuts. Generators or other alternative means were not very common then. Those days were tough.

Anyway, the first day of this Ramadan was quite good. I went to the mosque for fajr (early morning) prayers after a long time. There was a short talk after the prayers that there are three stations of fasting during Ramadan by Yusuf Shihabi. The lowest is to abstain from eating, drinking and sexual relations during the daytime. The middle station is to guard your desires. The highest is to do only those things that will please Allah. The iftar for bachelors in the mosque was sponsored by some kind soul and there were quite a few volunteers serving the food. Menu: Chicken Biryani, Salad, Vegetable Curry and Bread. Tea too.

More than the fasting, personally, I find the tarawih after isha prayer really taxing. Tarawih is a supplementary prayer throughout the month of Ramadan in which the entire Quran is recited. It is usually either 20 or 8 rakahs. The complete Quran is divided into parts by the hafiz (person who has memorized the Quran word by word) into parts and each day he recites a part. I really admire the people who not only pray all the 20 rakahs but do it with concentration. I think I suffer from NADD (Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder) as it is really difficult for me to concentrate after 8 rakahs or so and my mind starts wandering from every website from Digg to New York Times. Tarawih is started on the day the moon is sighted for Ramadan and stops the day the new moon comes for Eid. So, today was the second day of tarawih. Yesterday I stayed for whole 20 rakats but today I came back after 8 rakahs. I need to figure out how people do it otherwise.

After isha prayers there were two new converts to Islam who took shahadah (declaration of faith) from Imam Suhaib Webb. It was only apt that they took their shahadah from Imam Webb who himself is a convert. I am told that the number of people who take shahadah increases during the month of Ramadan.