My earliest memories of the fasting month was when i was 8 or 9. I started "trial" fasting then - mostly half-day affairs, which saw me chug down the largest bottle of water my little body could consume the moment i came home from school in the afternoon. I remember those early days as being very difficult because of the heat and the humidity.
It just keeps on going and going...
As each year passed and each ramadhan came and went, it seemed that the fasting month was permanently associated with heat and thirst. Then someone told me that this was because the fasting month always coincides with the dry and hot season, as a test from God. I can't remember who told me this, but i do remember that i believed this to be true for the longest time. Until i went to the International Islamic University and was taught the cycles of ramadhan.
The Islamic calendar follows the cycle of the moon, while the Gregorian calendar is a fixed measure of time, thus ramadhan will always fall on different times of the Gregorian year. And since our Earth's weather patterns tend to follow a permanent cycle according to the Gregorian year, then it goes to reason that ramadhan will not always fall in the same season. One year it could be in the dry/hot season, and many years down the line, it will be in the wet/monsoon season. I guess this is God's way of keeping things fair and interesting - every ramadhan will bring about a slightly different environmental experience.
This year, ramadhan has been incredibly wet. Unbelievably wet. Massively wet. And while it sounds like a good thing on the surface (why not? the air is cool so thirst and heat is less of an issue), it presents its own set of unique challenges to the fasting individual.
The most pressing of these challenges is the fact that KL has a peculiar equation that always comes true:
lots of rain = hellish traffic gridlock
It gets worse than this, really
traffic jam = getting home late
arriving home at 6.30pm = no time to prepare dinner = perpetual fast food for the breaking of fast
The principle of ramadhan, i've come to realize, is that its not meant to be easy. It is meant to be challenging, to be a test of faith. Heat, rain, dry, wet - in all conditions, preferred or deferred, that challenge will not be any less.
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