Whispers in my sleep.

I love you so much

That I have no words to say.

And I know that you love me too,

More than I ever can repay.

Take me in your arms,

Let me feel you all my day.

Drop me not, for I have none

If I don’t have you on my way.

Be with me when I am happy or sad

Be with me all night and all day.

Just watch my steps from everywhere

And allow me not go astray.

 

The Lost Baby

I am back again…. After almost 1 year.  Even though I’m a little glad to be hear in my page, I am really very sad. There is a very sad news to share with you all. I lost my baby, or my Hamdu mon as I planned to call him. The reason? The Umpilical cord got knotted around his neck! I wonder what a reason this is! The cord that feeds him and keeps him alive, killed him??!! What all things God can do!

At first I was reaaly shocked and sad ….and… I used to ask myself why did this happen to me? But I think even when  God plans terrible things for us, He also gives us the strength to get across those bad times. Or atleast, that was the case for me. I sometimes feel it was good that God took back my son He gave me.  I’m sure God will protect and take of him more than me. He will have Angels to play with, fruits and food to eat that no one in this world have heard of,  rivers of honey and milk to bath, golden glasses and plates ( and baby bottles?!!) in which he will eat… and most of all, he will be in Heaven, and he will be waiting for me there.

But still, tears drop down my cheeks… when I type these thoughts. The sadness of not being able to see my first little baby. The sadness of not being able to hold him in my arms, the sadness of not being able to kiss him… and above all, the sadness of not being able to breast feed him. I delivered him on May 14th. He will be in his fourht month now, making sounds, laughing, crying and trying to turn around on his belly. 🙂

I request to everyone who reads this post, to pray for me, that I reach near my Hamdu mon, in Heaven, soon. And don’t forget to include his father too in your prayer.

May God bless us all, with special blessings to all the mothers who have lost their children…

The Movements Inside

This is a very beautiful part of your life. Your pregnancy period, after the first trimester. There is no ear piercing cries of the new-born, no running behind the naughty little kid, no burning the mid-night oil for the 10th grade teenager… You just feel the ripples of life inside you…And you sit talking to that life, dreaming about it and planning its life ahead… 

I sit and talk to that life inside me, for hours. I don’t know if  (s)he can understand it, but I do it. Let me call it Vava(= baby in malayalam). I tell Vava about the God, trees, flowers, sky, sea, people, kids, birds, animals… about everything under the sun. This world is a a big, complex, fantastic place to see. Well, I also tell Vava about the negative part of the world -the corrupt politicians, war, injustice, illiteracy,  poverty and all that. But even with these problems, I think we are blessed with the life we got to see this place.

I wonder if everybody does this. The tiny movements inside… I wonder what Vava is doing when it makes such movements… playing? kicking? or just dreaming like me? May be it is dreaming about the world I have explained… Waiting anxiously to see this place. Will it understand anything when I say things like flowers, sea, war etc? Well, I don’t know. Does anybody out there know about it? I like to believe it does, and those with an answer NO for the above question, please don’t respond!

Through the Years With Ramadan.

The first years of Ramadan for me were spent in Fujairah, an east cost emirate of UAE. Fujairah is a peaceful place, unlike Dubai, with some farms, many villas and a peaceful and wide sea – the Gulf of Oman, reaching up to the costs of Cochin in Kerala. The thought of my homeland on the other side of the sea made me more attached to the sea than anything in Fujairah. I also loved it for its calmness, there were only few people at the beach, and so we had our own area in the beach.

There isn’t much to remember about the Ramadan in Fujairah. Ramadan came during the school days, and we were not allowed to take food to school on those days. One thing I remember about those days were lying that I was fasting. Also, our parents encouraged us to take half day fasts only. So it was two half day fasts into full day. And when somebody asked me about the number of days we had fasted, we would say four and a half or five and half and so on. I would compete with the number of days we had fasted with my younger brother, who is two years younger to me. The most difficult thing for us then and now is the shuhoor, or the late night dinner which you have in the middle of the sleep. I remember my brother getting for the shuhoor, and then the next day he will be saying, “I don’t remember anything I ate for the shuhoor.” On day he said, “I saw only the white walls when I got up for the dinner.” Hehehe. The thing that fascinated me more was the plates full of fruits and snacks at iftaar.

We were shifted to India, when I was in seventh grade, to an Islamic residential school. During the first two years, the school closed during the Ramadan. That was the time of mischief for us, me, my brother and our cousins. We had nothing particular to do in the mornings of Ramadan and so we all get out of the house into the near by farms. We would steal mangoes, gooseberries and guavas from the farms and hide it under our dresses till night. Sometimes, we will also go to the near by shops and buy some locally made toffees, with the money grandpa would give us. At night, when the elders have gone to sleep, we would get up and share the pieces of mangoes and other things between us. For this, we would all sleep in the same room, or near by rooms. We used to take all the 29 or 30 days of fast.

During the last days of Ramadan, grandpa would give us money to buy bangles and hair clips for eid. The boys would buy fire-works or toys like guns and cars. We would also buy some sweets. Grandpa loved us so much that he won’t allow us to take fast till the dusk. According to him, children need fast only till the noon. For him, I was a child even when I was at college! He used to scold grandma for making us fast till the dusk, even when I was in my late teens. According to him, we were still his kids. He passed away some three years back, or we would have been his kids even now! May Allah shower his forgiveness and peace upon him, make his abode wider and gather us in his paradise. Ameen.

From my ninth grade onwards, our school started working for Ramadan. That bought a change in me. We had schools only till noon, unlike normal days when we had schools till the evening. After school we, me and my friends, would sit to recite some Qur’an and we had Islamic classes in the mosque. I was getting into the real Ramadan, with all its life in me. The saddest day and the most memorable day of my life in Ansar, my school, was the day when my friend’s mother gave birth to twins, and they died with in an hour. Friendship in Ansar was something that I have not known before or after, it was a very special bond. My friend’s tears seemed to be my own, and it was the same for everybody. We all wept a lot that day. The Ramadan was also special in a way that we had great and good seniors to guide us, who were very loving. And yeah, I remember the day when one of my roommates’ father died. I came to know of the event before her from my teacher. My teacher asked me not to tell her about it until somebody came from her home. She was good at singing, and used to sing a song which meant something like this:

Why is my father, who gets up for fajr everyday, sleeping under this white blanket today….

Why didn’t my father call me today in the morning, to pray the fajr with him…..

Why isn’t my father talking to me, what I have done to make him angry with me….

Those words of the song still echo in my ears, and that was the last Ramadan she sang that song. During the last year of my school life, we celebrated the last Eid with our friends in hostel, one of my best Eids!

After school, I went to an Engineering college. Thanks for the Muslims friends I got at college, or Ramadan would have been a difficult time for me. There were some 20+ Muslim students in out hostel, and some really nice boys in our college. A lady in the town promised to cook iftaar and shuhoor for us, and the boys would deliver it on time. That was how we spent our first year at college. During the second year, we changed our hostel to another one, owned by a Muslim management. Fasting was made easier for us since w had iftaar and shuhoor cooked for us by the hostel cooks. We had tharaweeh prayer in jama’ath and we celebrated the Eid with our friends, while usually we did it with our family. Ramadan lost its life when at college, since we had a busy schedule of exams, practical works and records while at college. And yeah, we were in our late teens, which meant years with boiling blood in our veins. We used to fight with our wardens, cooks and management for every silly problem that came across our way. Even though we had jama’ath prayers at hostel, we would never take part in it because we hated our warden so much. Forgive us, Allah. It was bread when we wanted bun. S we would go to the warden and shout at her. It was fish when we wanted chicken. We would sit there without eating anything, and the whole fish would be wasted.

But we soon realized our mistakes, when our college lost its recognition and we were transferred to another college. That was the last year of our college life. We decided to take a rented house, as we were all tired of our hostel life. It was one week before Ramadan that we got the house. We had no cooking utensils with us, and so we were not able to cook anything. We decided to seek help from a hotel near by, and Alhamdulillah, they agreed. They delivered the food for iftaar and dinner. It was tough, taking the food from hotel everyday. We started to regret for the problems we made in the hostel, when they would provide us with food. Here we had no choice of bread or bun, and chicken or fish. Just eat what we got. May be it was a punishment we got for making mischief at the hostel and a way Allah chose to teach us to be thankful to the food we got. That was the most difficult Ramadan we had so far, and a memorable one too. We had seminars at college, which extended till seven or eight, and magrib would be at six. We would keep apart the snacks we got at seminar, and use that to break our fast. We would be so tired, with the long busy day at college, and sometimes seminars would turn to sleeping time. It will be somewhat eight or nine, when we reach home, to the food from the hotel. The food would taste better by that time. We missed home so much those days.

After college, I was married. Ramadan was easier then, at home, with so much of spare time to do the ibaadaths. Ramadan became lively once more, after the school days. Food was also not a problem, when at home. The next year, I came to Dubai with hubby, and there was my co-sister’s mom to help during the first Ramadan at Dubai. I find the heat a bit of problem in Dubai, but I think I can stand it. And this Ramadan is my first Ramadan alone, with me doing all the cooking myself. I sit here, now and think of the days of Ramadan, every Ramadan special to me, in its own way. Some Ramadan bought so much of time and rest to me, so that I can pray and make a lot of ibaadaths. But during some Ramadans, I had to fight to keep up with the feelings of Ramadan. I believe it’s all over now, and Ramadan would be the same for me from now onwards, with no friends, brothers and cousins to make the days active. The life as an adult is really boring, na?

Heat, Fast and Me.

So i have left out two days of Ramadan. I feel very sad, not being able to fast, but what can I do when the doctor says a ‘NO’? Its the urinary infection again, that made me leave two of my days in Ramadan. Seems I cannot take in the heat and the Fast together. Doc has asked me to take 1 or 2 glasses of Pocari Sweat every hour ( that leaves no place for food which mean I have to fast on Pocari Sweat!!), along with some medicines to be taken thrice daily. This happened last year also. But that time I left only 1 day of Ramadan. Heat has been my enemy since my childhood. I used to get all sorts of heat sickness during the summer. But once in India, I had no problem at all. Thanks to the moderate climate of India. And now again in the burning Dubai, all the heat diseases that left me years ago have come back, stronger, I think. So what do I do? 😦

Where is the Middle East?

 

I was going through the web pages of CERN, as it has hit the news lately. I looked at the member countries, mostly European countries. The non-member but observer countries include many Asian and American countries, with UNESCO as the observer organization. There were many under developed, developing and developed countries, but no where in the list I saw any GCC countries. There was Iran from the Middle East. I am sure these GCC countries are more developed than countries like Iran, India, Pakistan etc but their contribution towards the field of science and technology is either very less or a big zero, when compared with the said countries. Well, as far as Dubai is considered, science and technology means building the highest tower, the biggest water theme park, the longest bridge ( Did you hear it? There is no sea or creek big enough to build the longest bridge. So I hear they are digging the sea to widen it, and build a big bridge above it!!), the largest man made islands and so on. Guess whose brains and hands are behind these projects? The Europeans’, or Americans’’ or the Asians’. This is the birth place of Prophet Muhammed (saw) who made it obligatory for every muslim man and woman to seek knowledge, even though it be in China. And the people of the same birth place of Prophet (saw) stands last in the list of scientific and technical research centres. I feel shame as a muslim, as these 100% muslim countries has got nothing to do in the fields of higher education. But I also feel proud as an Indian, a country that has got her small but important contributions to the development of CERN.

 

Some months back, when I went to the Ibn Bathutha mall, I saw the works of so many talented Arabian scientists of the past displayed there. Looking at those displayed discoveries, a new thought came to me. Some years back, I read a novel written by the Malayalam writer Vaikom Muhammed Basheer. The novel was titled as “My great grandpa had an elephant”. Having an elephant was a prestigious issue among the Malayalees those days, like having a Rolls Royce car now-a-days. The character in the novel, a muslim lady, believes that as she is the grand daughter of a person who owned an elephant she should be respected by the society, and she goes on describing to everyone about the elephant her great grandpa had, although now she is poor and unworthy of a penny. The people around her, including her daughter and husband, get angry at these remarks of her and start mocking her. In the end, she understands that there is nothing like gaining respect for the glory of your ancestors.

I feel Ibn Bathutha Mall is like this character of the story, shouting loud that “My great grandpa was a scientist, so respect me!” No one ever turning their attention towards it. 

The Multi-Cultured Ramadan

Dubai is a multi-cultured city, with people from almost all parts of the world. And so is Ramadan here. I think the only similarity between these people will be the dates they take when breaking the fast. Even prayers seem to be different, if you really want to find any difference in it. When I go for tharaweeh, Masha Allah, what lots of people are there! With so many types of dresses, so much languages and yeah, so many type of prayers. Until Ramdan, I went to the masjid by the Malayalees, and so I never came across such a variety except while performing Umrah in Masjid-al-Haram.

Well, there are the Africans, may be Sudanese with their long hijab (I don’t know what it is really called) reaching below their knees. They are so tall and I feel so small when I stand with them during the prayer. The masjid near to us has got the 23 raka’th tharaweeh prayer. The Africans usually pray all of the 23 raka’aths.

There are some UAE nationals too. They come up fully covered from head to toe, with only the eyes opening. Once inside the ladies’ only area, they remove their abaya and hijab – and beneath it, it will be dresses similar to the western styles, sleeveless T shirts, jeans pants reaching up to the knee, or long sleeveless/ full sleeve but see through frocks. And there will be all sorts of make up on their faces.

There are also some Pakistanis who come in their Salwar-Kamees, with an abaya on top. The difference with the Pakistani and South Indian dressing is that Pakistanis use the shawl of their Salwar-Kamees as the hijab, but in South India we use the black hijab of the abaya itself. North Indians also have a similar dressing to that of Pakistanis. Some Pakistanis also wear the Niqab, which is very very rare in South India. During the prayer, most of the Indians and Pakistanis stop at the 8^th raka’ah, to be continued only during the last three of the remaining 15.

There is one woman who looks like a westerner, and speaks English. But there are so many who look like them and speak English like them. So I’m not sure. There are also other Middle East nationals coming from Lebanon and Iran. I love the way the Iranians dress – their long (????) I don’t know what it is called, a piece of cloth from head to toe which they wear while at prayer. After prayer they take it off, and beneath it they wear the usual dress – also my favorite, the topcoat and pants with a special type of hijab. I saw some Iranians keeping a piece of wood, round in shape, at the place where their head touches the floor while in Sujood. I don’t know why.

Some days I see some Mongolians too, I don’t know if they are from China, Japan or the –asian islands. They have long hijab, reaching up to their knee, and wear loose pants, made up of the same material used for the hijab, underneath.

The minor differences I find between the people are while standing for the takbir. Some tie their arms below the stomach, some on their stomach, some on their chest while some never tie it at all. Some of them tie their arm when standing straight after the rukoo’h. And while sitting for the ‘Aththahiyathu’ during the second raka’h, some people keep their fore finger straight all the time. Some open it at the ‘ashhadu alla ilaha illa allah…..’ and close it immediately after that. Some keep on pointing the forefinger till the end of the prayer, while some keep it opening and closing through out the sitting position.

I pray only 8 raka’aths, and then continue with the last three, so while waiting for the last three, I sit and watch all these differences between people. And the children, they also make a difference. While the Pakistani and Indian children are busy playing around while their moms are at prayer, the children of Middle East nationalities stand with their moms in prayer. May be the reason is, in India (I don’t know about Pakistan), the Imam and other people of the mosque discourage children in the masjid. So they never get a chance to learn the importance of masjid at the younger age. But in Middle East, it is entirely different. You can see children from 3+ months in the mosque. They get to learn the importance of prayer and masjid at a younger age.

About thte iftaar, I don’t know much about the food of other countries, because I have never gone for such an iftaar. Once I went to an iftaar by a UAE national. There were many dishes of which I didn’t even know the name. I recognized the haleem and custard. The main food was kabsa, and I loved it a lot. It was a dish prepared of raw rice.

So, Ramadan is fun, with this variety in the muslims. You can call it – unity in diversity

Changing my dwelling….

So here I’m in my new home. I feel thrilled and excited, at the same time a little lost at my new dwelling. I don’t know where the sugar is kept, where the flour is kept, and where are my shawls? I have to run around the home in search of something… But I’m sure I’ll soon get rid of this and become happy here.

Orderly Disordered

At school, college and now at my home, people come to my room and wonder, “How neatly you have arranged the room!” I used to take pride in these exclamations, until I found out the disadvantages of it. At college, in our boarding, there were three of us in a room. We had our own shelves, beds and racks. As I said, I always kept my rack neat and tidy. There were separate columns for text books, note books, files and other paraphernalia. I kept my dresses on the racks, with separate columns for civil dresses and college/school uniforms/dresses. I prided myself in the “Oh! How neat!” exclamations of my colleagues.
My room mate, Seena was just the opposite. Her books used to be on her bed, below her cot and in her dress rack. Her dress rack was one whole pile of everything, uniforms, civil dresses, socks and towels! Sometimes her files turned open with papers from it flying around our room. Now I feel the fun of running behind the papers, while I used to feel very angry with her at those times. I used to ask her to keep things neat, but she never bothered to do so. I sometimes tidied her shelves myself, but it was of no use. Within two days, the shelf will be looking like a place after a storm. Even with this difference between us, we were good friends, and went along very well, although I used to complain to her of her disorderliness.
But one morning all my pride in my neatness dried up. The story goes like this:
We were asked to submit our semester’s bus fee bill, to get the free bus identity cards for us. Students with the identity card could use the bus service provided by the college. As soon as the notice was read in our class, Seena started panicking. She doesn’t remember where she has kept her bus fee bill. I scolded her for being so careless about the bill, and internally prided myself in keeping all the bills in one of the files. That night I found Seena busy searching her bill. I went to my book shelf, opened the file of bills and started looking for my bill. To my surprise, the bill I was looking for was not in the file! I didn’t know what to do or where to search, for I never kept my things out of place. But still, I searched my bags, my purse and everything I could. It was nowhere to be found. By this time, Seena has dug out her bill form her dress rack and came up with that to me. I told her about my missing bill, and she helped in searching it, but without success. I had to pay Rupees 25 for a duplicate of the bill the next day, to get my bus permit.
After this incident, I started observing Seena more. When someone came to her for her books, she would reply, “It will be on my book shelf, you can take it.”
The person won’t find her book there, and will say so to her. Seena will think for a while, and then answer, “Ok, can you please look in my dress rack, under the blue file near the white CD?”
The person will find it there.
But in my case, if someone asked me my text book, and if it was not on the bookshelf column of text books, then that meant trouble to me. I had no other places to look for, even if I must have misplaced it somewhere. And I hated searching for anything, because searching meant throwing all the articles out of their place!

So what is better: to be neat and tidy and ordered or to be orderly disordered?

The X – chromosomes

I was reading an article about how to care our eyes, when I saw a tip in it saying 25% of men are more prone to eye deceases, while the rate of women are only some 5 – 10%. The reason – the XX chromosomes in women. I remember reading an article in Gulf News, with the heading ‘The X chromosomes’. Oh, I thought at first, another silly article about women, shouting aloud their duties as mother and wife. I was just turning the page, when I caught a sentence explaining why women are less prone to big deceases. I sat to read the full article, and when I completed it, I was really happy to have an extra X chromosome in me. While the Y chromosome have got no major role in the human body except in deciding the sex( and may be some smaller areas), the X chromosomes provide immunity to the body.
Do you remember Robert Langdon’s Divine Proportion in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code? The number 1.618. The number of females are 1.618 times more than the number of males. I used to wonder how this could be true. The chances that a baby born is girl or boy is 50% and so shouldn’t the male to female proportion be 50 – 50? But statistics prove it to be wrong. Even if the birth ratio of bays and girls is 50 – 50, the number of boys that die at younger ages is greater than that of females.And the reason – the X chromosome. And so more girls on earth. Well, I do not take in account the countries like India where abortion and infanticide on the basis of sex is popular.
Females should have more immunity than men. right? Because they have to bear 1(+) children for nine months in their womb, attend surgeries for the delivery and lot of such activities that makes them sick. So they should have the best immune system, and it is provided by the extra X chromosome. Now for parents who brood over not having a boy, be happy that you have a more healthy girl child with you. And ladies, thank to God for the Xtra X chromosome in you.
I wonder if the tears ( another happy news here: tears are good for the eyes, another reason why women have less eye deceases than men), chattering, backbiting, kindness, love and patience are also the gifts of the X chromosome.