Every year the onset of Ramadan ushers in a strange cultural transformation in urbanized Muslim societies. A natural consequence of waking up to eat in the darkest hours of morning, fasting from dawn to dusk, and consuming huge amounts of food at sunset is that your biological clock along with the rest of your bodily functions goes completely haywire. In Muslim majority societies however, fasting isn’t an individualistic phenomenon, but a socially driven lifestyle readjustment– owing to centuries of exposure to communal Islam. As the day is stripped off food, drink, sex, and smoking, the social-economy of many Muslim cities like Cairo and Abu Dhabi go nocturnal with hookah bars, and eating places switching to a night oriented schedule to target the faithful consumers who chose to abstain in the daylight hours. It has become common for restaurants, cafes, cinemas and other food and entertainment establishment to remain closed during the hours of fasting.
Like other comparative cities, Lahore also goes through the motions of preparing for, and adjusting to the doctrines, customs, and traditions of Ramadan –both local and imported. While believers, non-believers, and religious minorities alike become immediately conscious of the month at its very onset with the sighting of the new moon, other aspects of urban life undergo an interesting, almost mechanical transition into the Ramadan way-of-life.
Ramadan is legally represented in the Pakistani constitution as ordinance for the “respect of Ramadan”. Legislated by the zealous administration of General Zia, this law prohibits public consumption of food and smoking are forbidden during the month, punishable by a fine, or imprisonment, or both. Restaurants are not allowed to conduct business until sundown. Government offices, and schools reschedule to a Ramadan oriented schedule with less taxing hours of operation. Bureaucratic inefficiencies suddenly gain acceptability in the workplace as they come under the article of faith umbrella. It suddenly becomes okay to slack off, run off to prayers, or simply be distracted at work with daydreams of tempting delicacies to be enjoyed at sundown.
Attitudes change, a sudden laxness is noticed during the mid-day and afternoon hours, around sundown a sudden chaotic urgency is unmistakably felt in the traffic and on the streets. Even the foreigner becomes weary of the changing mindset of the people. I recall last Ramadan a visiting faculty in a local university was asking a clerk where he could smoke a cigarette without offending anyone, to which the conservative minded clerk responded by pointing out some nooks and crannies in the campus where he wouldn’t get spotted. A part of me wanted to interject and tell the European that his skin color gave him license enough to smoke freely in the open.
Ramadan is seen by the somewhat-faithful as a chance to recharge their religious batteries, so to speak. The country as a whole edges a notch up the piety scale whenever the lunar month comes around, i.e. the somewhat pious become more pious, the more pious become ultra pious, and the ultra pious lock themselves in a room for the entire month, leaving the not-so-pious get lumped in the heretic category. A so called ‘bad Muslim’ who doesn’t otherwise incorporate religion in his daily life will choose to fast, and possibly even pray during this month as a way to reconnect with the faith. Some people choose to fast due to mere cultural nostalgia, or for the sake of family tradition.
For someone not so religious, who happens to find themselves in a country like Pakistan during this holy month, eating in public attracts the scorn of the public gaze as if a sinful deity is being worshiped, for eating in front of people observing a fast is to tempt them away from the right path, and to tempt is the devil’s prerogative. Afraid of irrevocably sparking the emotions of hundreds of hungry and frustrated Muslims, non-Muslims, and bad-Muslims alike have to eat in the secrecy of their homes as the Islamic Republic pretends it is wholly populated by the faithful. But then one is left to wonder why saliva inducing commercials of food and drink are allowed to bombard the airwaves all day.
When the time for breaking the fast comes about, all the local television channels start airing religious programing and interludes while announcing the time for evening prayers in different locations across the country. In anticipation of the city switching to the Ramadan schedule, the pricing of time-slots for ads on airwaves are reorganized well before time. The peak times get synced in with the rising and the setting of the sun, as more people turn on their television sets around these national meals of pinpoint accuracy.
Even the corporations, it seems, embrace Islam during this month. Large multinationals like Nestle and Coca Cola are swift to shift their marketing campaigns into Ramadan mode by replacing sexual imagery with pseudo-religious iconography along with a heavy dose of family values. The billboards that cascade around the streets and boulevards of Lahore suddenly become laced with standard Islamic symbolism such as the crescent moon and mosque silhouettes. Almost everything has a Ramadan deal associated with it regardless of religious significance. The local McDonald’s offers to shower “Ramadan Blessings” with its new combo meal, and a chance to win pilgrimage tickets in a lucky draw. Dunkin’ Donuts offers an all you can eat offer after sunset. Cellphone providers advertise hot lines to get Quranic verses for a per minute charge, and radio stations switch to more a spiritual choice of music in lieu of saucy Bollywood hits.
As the economy is affected by the holy month food and basic commodity prices in Pakistan also show a trend of steep inclines as Ramadan approaches. This year the commodity markets have been especially strained with hoarding of sugar, restricting supply to drive up the price further, the timing of a few incidences right before the month was all but too curious. While Ramadan is the holiest of months, hoarding is something that has been scorned at in the Quran. The government claims to have made arrangements and set up subsidised rate markets for the poor, but reports suggest even those arrangements are shoddy.
I thought that was very interesting. Thanks for the unusual post. I’ll keep an eye on this.Bob Perry, Work New York, 65 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007