Through with almost a month of fasting in Ramadan, the heart longs for Eid, that wonderful festival which brings with it siwaiyan, sheer and kheer. The newspapers never tire of photographs of little boys locked in a hug, saying “Eid Mubarak” at the historic Jama Masjid. Else, they come up with pictures with a nice interplay of shine and shade showing the faithful bowed in devotion at Feroz Shah Kotla. But talk of Eid and all its celebrations, and I think of a book which I read more than a couple of decades ago. It is a book that has stayed with me down the years. It is a book that comes to mind on the eve of Eid too as I see young men and women climb to the terraces of their apartments and flats to catch a glimpse of the new moon, the moon that would mean an end to fasting and usher in revelry.
Aptly called “Night of the New Moon”, Anees Jung’s book stays with me after all these long years. I have greyed, the pages of the book have yellowed. It smells nice. Reads nice too.
Anees talk of the new moon more in the context of the eve of Ramadan when people look for the moon with an air of devotion knowing that the new moon will usher in a month of fasting, the month when the Holy Quran was revealed. As she writes, “As a child I climbed the highest terrace of our house to sight the new moon. Would it rise or would its crescent curve evade our eyes? It was a night of waiting, of not knowing, of wondering. When it wanly appeared it was hailed as a great sign from heaven. From the glittering minarets of mosques the grave mullahs would announce that the moon had been sighted. The old cannons in my childhood city would boom.” Yet when the new moon was sighted after 30 days, the feelings would be completely different. This time, people would anticipate its arrival on a cloudless sky, giggling girls would rush to say salam to their grandparents, young men would step out to announce to the world that the Eid moon has been sighted. Yet, it too is more of a memory now.
As Anees writes, “Today I sight the new moon in Delhi’s smog-filled skies. High terraces open to the heavens are a thing of the past…Eid no longer means a celebration that marks the long wait.”
Though she talks with passion and detached reason about the night of the new moon, Anees’s book is much more that. In fact, it is a portrait of Muslim women across the country, from Bhopal, the city of the Begums, to Hyderabad the city of Ameena, the girl who refused to be married off to an old Arab to the town of Kerala, and of course Delhi and Lucknow. With each snapshot she opens a new world to the readers. Though written more than a couple of decades ago, some of the words retain their relevance. For instance when she talks of Najma Heptullah, Minister in the Modi Government now, then the Deputy Chairperson of Rajya Sabha. Najma talks insightfully about her childhood, the days when her grandmother, sister of Maulana Azad, would be an inspector of schools during the reign of Sultan Jehan Begum. “For a woman to be educated in Bhopal was not an exception but the rule….Women were never barred from the mosque, only exempted.” This rings a bell today as women across the country seek to have their own space in mosques, arguing vociferously with maulanas.
Then at the other extreme, Anees presents a nine-year-old in Bombay, visiting a famous shrine. Asked, what would she pray for, the little girl replies, “a black satin burqa”. For her, the burqa was not a garb that locked her out of the world, it was a gift. Unlike the women in Delhi who gathered to protest against Muslim Women’s Bill. They dropped their veil, not the privacy it implied.
The best though comes from the Begum in Bhopal. She had adjusted to a life of sharing her husband with other women. Many years removed from the age of royalty, she never stepped out of her ‘golden cage’. When her husband was stripped of his title, she remained untouched by the loss. “She had her faith,” says Anees. And went about her life with her husband’s co-wives and companions. After all the years of suffering, did she ever feel like crying, bursting out in front of the world? No. The Begum says it all: “One cries before Allah not in front of fellow human beings…Never let your heart be empty of God. Only He stays. All else is fanna, that extinction which marks the end of all human journeys.”
So, as I write this day on what is probably the last day of Ramadan and Eid is all but here, I cannot but remember the Begum’s words. “Never let your heart be empty of God. Only He stays.” Thanks Anees for a book that has stayed the course for so many years.
