One hears over and over again how one is victorious after a month of fasting. After controlling one’s worldly cravings during the day and doing rigorous worship throughout the Holy Ramadhan, one returns to fitrah and innocence like a newborn baby.

But I found it hard to reconcile such picture of innocence with what I saw that evening.

On the eve of Iedul Fitri, on the way home from work, I found the night alive and crowded with assortments of spectacle. There were motorbikes and bicycles convoys. Pick-up trucks paraded with “bedug” that were more like a football-match-win parade. People on either side of the road were buying and selling –among the commodities were fresh flowers for grave visits, which I could still smell miles later and triggered a nasty (memory of an unpleasant) hallucination– or simply enjoying the night away. I even saw fireworks, more and merrier than I’d seen on new year’s eve. I went passed a number of cafés offering live music, some were so loud that I wondered if anyone can enjoy it. The streets too were full of ad billboards, banners and displays, conveying Iedul Fitri greetings.

The atmosphere was clearly celebratory. But I didn’t feel like celebrating. I kept thinking that there was something wrong with this picture. As if Ramadhan had been a prison, now that it had ended and we gained our liberty, let’s go back to “business” as usual. I supposed it was another bout of “post-ramadhan blues”. But I couldn’t help but feel sad.

As I reached a turn at a junction, I realised what was missing. The further I went down the path that lead up to the hill where I live, the quieter and darker it got. But here, where the sky was filled with stars instead of fireworks and lamplights and the music was the lulling humming of the night wind, one can hear clearly the relentless voices from distant places, “Allahu Akbar… Allahu Akbar… Allahu Akbar,” that defined what the night should be, the night of Takbir.

I recalled a story Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam mentioned in an interview with Simon Mayo, on BBC 5Live’s Daily Mayo in July⁽¹⁾ –I’ve read about the story somewhere but sort of forgotten about it⁽²⁾.

It’s about a little girl (or is it a boy) who had had a newborn baby sister (or brother?). She asked her parents if she could be left alone with her baby sister for a moment. They first thought it wasn’t a sound idea. Yet, she insisted. And when they finally let her, they overheard her asking the baby, “tell me about God. I’m beginning to forget.”

If we were returning to innocence like newborn baby, with memory of the "primordial pledge and testimony"⁽³⁾ all souls have made still fresh in mind, then where was God in all these celebrations? What exactly were we celebrating?

We are indeed beginning to forget... Allahumaghfirli.

Taqabbalallahu minna wa minkum...
Happy Iedul Fitri 1430 Hijriyah.