A PUBLIC AFFAIR

Scenario 1
With the start of the holy month of Ramadan, traffic congestions have intensified three times as usual, making it difficult for many people to reach home on time for iftar. On his way back home from office a few days back, as Iqbal Ahmed boarded his regular bus, he discovered it was more crowded than usual. Like one of those days, he was still on the bus during iftar time, so he broke his fast with water. “Within the next five minutes, I found myself sharing dates, cucumbers, a packet of Jilapi with people sitting next to me, and standing around me,” he says. Generally, we are careful not to take anything from strangers, but when you share your iftar meal with a bus full of people, it feels more like a celebration. 

Scenario 2
There was ten minutes left until iftar and every shopkeeper of Bashundhara City Complex was preparing to take their iftar break. While the shoppers rushed to the food court upstairs, a group of first year students from BUET was still stuck with their broken camera in a camera repair shop. By the time their camera was fixed, they had only a few minutes left for iftar. “As we were getting ready for a race towards the food court, we discovered that the shopkeepers had made iftar arrangement for us as well, much to our surprise,” says one of the students. “Forgetting how we were arguing over the service charge just a few minutes back, we sat together, shared food from the same bowl, and stood together for the Magrib prayers,” his friend adds, with a smile. 

Scenario 3
42-year-old Abdul Hakim, a van driver, bought his usual iftar meal - a packet of puffed rice, some vegetables for salad, a bunch of fried items for himself and some of his companions near the TSC area. As they waited to break their fast, they saw two students holding huge project works, almost running to catch their iftar. “It was about to rain, and there were no restaurants nearby where they could go for iftar, so I asked them to join us,” says Hakim. “We could not say no to chacha's request of joining them for iftar,” says one of the students. 

Abdul Hakim further adds, “We are ordained to hasten to break the fast and not to delay it. Then why not ask people who are unable to catch their iftar to join us?”

If you find yourself stuck on the road or a market place just as before iftar time, you can definitely relate to these scenarios. Starting from the alleys of old Dhaka, Shahbag, Kakoli to Uttara, the whole city shares this culture of sharing iftar in a public sphere with a group of strangers.  

While we celebrate different offers, presented by fancy restaurants of the city, the streets of Dhaka along with a group of random strangers welcome us with warm hospitability during iftar. Iftar, as stated in Islam, is not only a meal to fill our stomach with a variety of food. It also, is an occasion of gratitude, happiness and a spiritual experience. An iftar on the street, thus, carries a different essence from any other gathering elsewhere, as this opens up the lines of communication, appreciation and mutual understanding between people belonging to different classes and cultures.  

If you have not experienced any such occasion as of yet, it's probably time to revise your Ramadan to-do checklist. Next time you are stuck somewhere right before iftar, offer whatever food you have to people around you, and you will find many people doing the same as well. Through this simple act of sharing food, you too will feel closer to the strangers.