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Saturday, August 14, 2010

Singapore Traveller Not Fasting

There was once a small boy who had been fasting for a few years. One evening, while playing around with some friends in the month of Ramadhan, he suddenly saw a car stop by the roadside. There were two men in the car. The curious small boy and his friends stopped playing and watched them with deep interest. They saw the men taking out something, put the ‘thing’ in their mouths and started to eat. Munch, munch, chomp chomp chomp.

The boys soon learned that the men were Singaporeans on a journey northwards. They had stopped by the roadside to have a rest and were not fasting as they were making a long journey and the religion had given them the advantage of not having to fast. What was more interesting was, before continuing their journey, they had given the boys some cakes that they had brought along with them. The boys looked at the cakes, then at each other. What to do with the cakes? They were fasting. They looked at the cakes again. Nice, sweet fragrant hari raya cakes that made their mouths water. They knew that they had to wait a few more hours before it was time to break the fast. So they divided the cakes among themselves. Then the small boy went home, hiding his share of the cakes under his shirt.

In his house, he sneaked cautiously towards the bedroom after making sure nobody had seen him. In the bedroom was an ancient, king sized bed. It stood on four stilts, wrapped around with a curtain, completely blocking anything or anybody hiding under it from view. As the base of the bed was quite high; about three feet from the floor, a person could easily lie down on the floor under it with ease.

Under that bed the boy hid and munched his cake. He had broken his fast for that day without his mother’s knowledge. Who was that boy?