Eat It

Breaking fast in a restaurant sometimes can test your patience to the limit. And because it is Ramadan, you have to continually remind yourself that you are fasting -- just ignore everything around you, sit at your table quietly like a good boy/girl and wait for the azan before sinking your fork into the food.

Patience is often frayed during Ramadan. But one stupid move and all that abstinence from food, drink, cigarette, sex, negative thinking and improper behaviour since dawn comes down to naught; all you get is a growling stomach and more blood pressure. Practise refrain in all areas, so says the preacher.

What bothers me isn't the restaurant food or the waiters. It isn't even the naked navels which seem to be everywhere you turn. (You saw one belly button and you have seen them all, be they plain or pierced.) What makes me mad are people who are not obliged to fast by religion but join the fast-breaking crowd at fast-breaking time. That in itelf should bid well in promoting religious tolerance and racial harmony in a country like ours.

Right. Provided they can wait for a few minutes for the cue to eat together with the rest of us, in that restaurant and scattered all over the country, out of common courtesy and as a mark of respect.