Thursday 27 August 2009

heroes pt III

the local musolla is small. roughly double the size of my room (which is about 40 times the size of the shoebox i used to live in back in london, mind you). there is a pious man who runs the place, and when i say 'runs' i mean he has taken the responsibility upon himself, because there really isn't any gains from doing it, he won't even accept praise for the amount of work he does. already you can see how this is building up similar to father flintstone's reputation.

during this fasting month of ramadhan, exactly 3981.91 persons will show up to the musolla made to fit 32.333 (repeating of course).

the first thing that makes pious man awesome is his speech after the breaking of fast - he'll invite everyone, and their mom's cat to eat, irrespective of who they are; i quote: 'come brothers / sisters, have some food. don't worry if you don't pray here, food is for everyone. come have food'. the funny thing about this being that about three-quarters of the people who turn up actually don't pray at the musolla, and the fact that he can be serious while taking the mick out of everyone. well. just awesome.

the second thing is again about shutting (profanity) people up. after the maghrib prayers, pious man has a short sermon while the food is getting readied. and, although i can empathise and relate to how the fasting people are anxious to the smell of freshly-cooked basmati spiced rice, tender roast mutton, salad and yogurt sauce, i would think it an inappropriate time to chat and make a scene. which is indeed what most of the attendants are doing. now, again, for the small group who are intently (trying to) paying attention to his sermon, this is a major bummer.

instead of directing these people to quiet down due to his sermon, he will say something about ctfd'ing to let new arrivals attend to their prayers, which, albeit being true, makes me shake my head in disbelief. further interruptions are best handled by 'requesting' the loud persons to help set up mats outside the prayer area, where they can't disrupt the sermon, which is win-win for everyone since they can make as much noise as they want outside, anyway. well played, good sir.

pious man, you're my hero.

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