Justice is served hot...

It was an evening for evening out the odds. Actually it was nighttime. A summer night in India. The heat reaching unprecedented highs. Our servants and their kids were sleeping on their mats on the floor as always. Mum had told them to use the desert cooler to take some of the edge off the heat while they slept.

I came downstairs for my daily bedtime ritual - turn on the AC in the bedroom I shared with my two sisters, pray Isha in the cooling blast, curl up with a book and read until I doze off. I reached automatically for the AC switch to turn it on, and then the unthinkable happened. The circuit breaker was shot, the switch wouldn’t operate, and we were AC-less for the night.

Our options were:
A- Wake up my dad and see if he could fix the switch.
B- Go upstairs and sleep in our parents’ room
C- Take the cooler away from the servants and bring it into our room
D- Open the windows, turn the fan up high, and tough out the night

Options A and B were discarded because they involved disturbing our sleeping parents. Option C was like delivering our soul to the devil. The three of us agreed unanimously that it was grossly unfair to rob the servants of the marginal cooling of the cooler, just because our AC was not working this once.

And so it was that the tables were turned for one night.

The windows were opened, blankets thrown away and we settled down for the night. Tossed, turned and sweated, until we eventually drifted into oblivion.

That night, for once, our servants slept more comfortably than we did. And maybe, just maybe I slept a little better too. Free of that guilt I’ve felt every night when I would step out of my AC room into the heat of the hall to have a drink of water, and wonder how they slept in it. Wonder about life and its unfairness. Wonder about my part in it.

I had once spent part of one night in the balcony, with a sheet on the bare floor when there had been a prolonged electricity failure in Hyderabad years ago. But that had actually been nicer, with the outdoor breeze and the cool floor, if I disregard the mosquitoes. So, this probably counts as the harshest night I have ever spent in terms of temperature. But when my alarm rang for Fajr, I was up in an instant, fresh and ready to pray. No procrastination, no sleep filled brain turned to mush, no sleeping through alarm.

And it made me wonder what the real deal is. Maybe that night, I was actually better off in more than one way...

Searching for answers…

It came to me after a lot of pondering and philosophizing. The reason I’ve been feeling so out of sorts and lost in the last few days.

I’ve run out of steam. I’m fresh out of diversion techniques. I’ve run smack into myself.

For perhaps the last six months or so, I had something to look forward to. The trip to India. I had worked for it, worked out for it, waited for it.

And now that I am here and am living out my long-awaited holiday, I have to face that the buck doesn’t stop here. What next? What do I plan for? What do I long for? What do I live for?

I can keep setting goals for myself all my life, but they will all eventually meet the same fate. I need to recognize the real goal. The right goal. THE goal.

And as a Muslim, I am aware of what my ultimate goal is. But what good has that done me so far? For all my religious fervour, I am not “spiritually awakened” enough to live life in pursuit of the elusive siratul mustaqeem (straight path to heaven).

I like the way my friend put it the other day– "Islam wants us to live in an almost dual/schizophrenic state (not in any bad way). Working to build a good future yet praying every prayer as if its the last". That really made me think.

Call it balance, schizophrenia, or divine design, there is a duality that exists in all things. Yin-yang, day-night, good-evil, joy-grief, win-lose. Life-death. The way I see it - Islam teaches us how to cope with that highly dual state. To overcome that weakness that has us vacillating between positive and negative. To live every day with the best intent and purpose, whilst being prepared to return happily to our Maker at any given moment.

To some that may seem highly irregular. But to me - it helps me understand. (Especially given that I'd been really disturbed ever since my young cousin's life-threatening illness about what the meaning of anything is). It helps me understand how fragile our life is. It helps me understand the method in all the apparent madness. Within this duality lies the key to being at peace. If I could live each day with purpose and enthusiasm, and at the same time be ready to give it all up in an instant without regrets – isn’t that the right way to do it? Actually, isn’t that the only way to do it?

God in His infinite wisdom offers us the best of both worlds – fid duniya hasanataun wa fil aqirati hasanataun (The best in this life, and the best in the after-life). The win-win strategy, the final master-stroke of duality...