Food

Anand Nagar  (Happiness Town) is the name of the neighbourhood where my house (my parents house) was, before I got married. My parents must have moved half a dozen times between the time I was born and the time when I went to Junior High. Although my father was an accountant he loved construction work. He would buy a house, renovate it and then sell it. My mother did not want to sell our house in Anand Nagar because it was a very pretty place, beautiful flowering plants and fruit trees, a huge prairie in the valley of Banjara Hills (now a lot of Bollywood Actors have built their vacation homes there). When we first moved there my parents friends and some of our relatives were worried for us because besides one more family, we were the only Muslims there. My father always believed that we need to be a good human being (maumin) before we can be a good Muslim. Being scared of other human beings (even though they are not from our faith) is not a good way of starting off as a good human being.
Today on the first day of Ramadan (we say Ramazan), I remember all of this because Ramadan is a month of sharing and caring, more than anything else. In this month we fast all through the day (sunrise to sunset), refrain from all kinds of pleasures and give charity. People who have health problems, travelers, pregnant mothers, nursing mothers and kids under fourteen years of age are exempted. We can opt to feed a meal a day to someone everytime we miss a day of fast when we are fourteen or older and have medical condition. My father did not fast becuase he would become lethargic and would be in danger of passing out if he did not eat every couple of hours. Today this condition is called hypoglycemia. Therefore my mother would give someone a meal a day, to take home and enjoy. That gentleman was not of our faith. In spite of a lot of criticism my mother did not care. Her answer would always be, "he is a human being first, then a believer in whatever faith he belongs to."