City Faith – Ramzan Banquet, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya’s Sufi Shrine
Sacred meal.
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
The tiled floor has got a new pattern. It is carpeted with hundreds of paper plates. Each plate is filled with sliced fruits and a piece of fried kachori.
The Delhi Walla is at the women’s part of the Jamaat Khana mosque in the Sufi shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. It is a listless afternoon in Ramzan, the Islamic season of fasting that commemorates the month when the Quran is believed to have been sent down from heaven and revealed to Prophet Muhammad. Preparations are at full swing in the shrine for the evening’s Iftari meal.
These portions will be served in the courtyard just outside this mosque where a great number of people will sit down in neat rows to break the fast. At the moment the prayer hall is looking like a makeshift dining area with rusty old steel almirahs lined up beside the walls. A khadim, one of the shrine’s many hereditary caretakers, is seated on a chair, presiding over the preparations. A couple of women are huddled in one corner, slicing melons. Two boys of school-going age are quietly filling up the plates with pieces of that summer fruit. But samosas are still to arrive and somebody has to make gallons of Roohafza rose drink.
Suddenly a fly lands on a plate and appears to dig into a fleshy piece of mango. If only she were a fasting believer.
Wait until the evening please
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
so wonderful! god bless everyone and you Delhiwalla to get us close to him from these pictures 🙂
A god that can not protect its offerings and BLINDED-by-the-reallJUNK-superstition-devotees from the disease-ridden flies is a worthless god … or a god of disease of mind and body 🙂
World needs science with kindness, not the scriptures and superstition.
Dear Vishal … Its funny but little flies are also Gods – Creation creatures (despite their nature) and everything is deeply connected … People belive what they belive and we must respect that. Science is good for sure but thats not all.
Love, D.
Vishal,
Do yourself a favour and read Mr. Dattatreya’s reply.
Science has to be the biggest religion becauae one cannot even say anything against it.
Science is known but our knowledge is so limited
Peace