ramadan rendezvous

Tomorrow is going to be the last day of Ramadan for this year, a Ramadan like no other, due to the global pandemic coronavirus covid-19. This is also the new Ramadan for me, being far from home. Yes, I’m still in Indonesia, but located in one of the big cities, quite far away from my comfy home island. I am ordering catering special for this occasion, they deliver it in the afternoon before iftar and in the evening, for the 3am meal before fasting. It’s in one small box and the menus are varied, usually the white rice (because it turns out that I’m not a fan of red rice) and vegetables or chicken or eggs. They also provide some fresh fruits. It is not that much but I am okay with the portion.

Experiencing Ramadan in the west part of Indonesia is different, everything happens faster than the east, I mean for the prayer time. And I finally get it why people in the west having iftar with rice instead of some sweet cakes, because the gap between the first azan the second one is pretty long, so the first one is to inform that its iftar time and the second one is when the prayer will be conducted. Though, the practice is all performed from home, or rented room for some cases, people like me. It is so depressing, we were used to skipping the Friday prayer for how many I even lost counts, and then now doing every Ramadan prayer not in the mosque, then later after Ramadan ends, the id prayer will be also taken place from each of the houses. It’s okay if you live in a house, what about me in a room?

Talking about the overall review of this year’s Ramadan, I don’t think it is my best Ramadan, again. At least I was so into it the first ten days and then getting lazier in the next days. The fluctuation is real. I cannot always wake up for 3 am meals, even with the assistance of my super loud multiple alarms. But it is unique, however, that the new Ramadan we have during pandemic really testing people of to whom do they really fasting or praying for. Because it has nothing to do like any other regular Ramadan where there are eyes everywhere watching, it is more private, you fast or pray and only you the one who know it.

I definitely have no right to do the preaching here because my Ramadan is not as fully optimized as I expected, so I would like to just being honest here. I skip many prayers, I don’t always read holy book, only once or twice did the 3am prayer because I can barely wake up and when I open my eyes its always only the food that I was looking for and went back to sleep afterwards. I'm so not proud of it.

The thing is, it is just the same story being told over and over again. Like the end of the year, when many of us planning things that we’re going to do more for the next year, we don’t really do the talk. The same pattern I see whenever we approach the Ramadan then say good bye knowing we didn’t do the best we could, why humans why. Not every human follows this template, maybe you don’t.

But then again, I am probably have stated this thought here somewhere in the other old post, I want to emphasize that the common belief that evil forces or devils are being locked down or chained during the thirty days of Ramadan for the sake of humans not doing any reckless stuff is always come to mind. What I’m trying to say is that, it’s not their fault at all, it is just us, humans being humans every day. How would you, us, say we were dragged down to the wrong path in the middle of the special time when every devil in the world are being super powerless by the ultimate commend of the almighty God, right?

Everything is always there all alone, just one thought away. If humans can commit such horrible crimes during Ramadan, technically humans can do it two times as bad or even worse outside the Ramadan. Sometimes I wonder about the fact that being human is really not an easy job.

I also get such an amazing experience during my stay in this city, regarding of being a minority. I tried google it or Wikipedia it, asking the average numbers of believers, I found that the city consist of more of those who share the same belief as to what I believe in but it is somewhat the complete opposite, that’s what I can observe on my small community of students and teachers in training.