EID IN SHEFFIELD, UK EID MUBARAK. Eid was celebrated in UK, I understand, on 8th August. We wanted to dine at a restaurant named MIRPURI DHERA. As the name implies, it is run by a Muslim family originally from Mirpur in Pakistan. When we booked a table we asked them whether they were accepting bookings from others, meaning thereby other than Muslims. They, however, said that they were accepting bookings from ‘others’. We promptly reached the restaurant at 8.15 pm and were received at the entrance politely. When we specifically wanted a particular table, we were politely told that we would be more comfortable in another part of the restaurant which they had earmarked for families for the day. We were allotted a comfortable table and service was prompt. In any case it was a buffet dinner, It later transpired that the restaurant was segmented, for the day, into three parts, one for men, second for women with children and the third for families. We were the only ‘others’ in the restaurant but everyone was polite. The ladies were dressed in typical deep coloured clothes of South Asia and the men were in simple attire, many in traditional clothes. There was a lavish spread. I did not know, till yesterday, that there can be 25 chicken dishes! Limited dishes were available for vegetarians and three of us were strict vegetarians, one of them my daughter in law who is a Jain. However, the mood of dinner took over and we all ate heartily. The dinner was rounded up with kheer and cakes (which were scarcely touched as most had kheer}. There was mango lassi in pitchers too! The quality was good by standards of Indian restaurants in the UK. There were a few funny incidents during dinner too. A waitress, born and brought up in the UK, had no idea about the names of the dishes on offer and a waiter, obviously a new immigrant , could not insert the credit card into the machine properly though he tried at least 10 times, despite our help! When we left the restaurant everyone thanked us profusely for patronising the restaurant. The dinner brought back memories of our village, Valavanur in Villupuram District of Tamilnadu, which had sizeable Muslim population. Those were days when our Muslim neighbours were mamas and Chittappas (chachas) to us. On Diwali days, they would visit us for a meal in our house and on Ramzan day, hot briyani and brinjal thoku (fries) will reach our homes before they partook their own feast. The day of Ramzan was a holiday for my mother as she was not required to cook. If a child fell ill, we would take the child to the mosque in the evening and wait in the queue till the prayer was over. Each of the Muslims returning from prayer would blow air at the child and we genuinely believe, even till today, that the blessings of Allah, the beneficient and merciful, would cure the child. Hajis especially were most sought after for blessing the child as we believed that a visit to Mecca made them as sacred as the holy place itself. I fondly recall my father playing Silambam (the martial art of wielding sticks) during Sandana Kudam, a procession organised by Muslims, every year and he was not the only Hindu who regularly participated in the festival. I recall that even after he reached 60 years of age, he had to accede to the wishes of his Muslim friends to participate in the procession. It was an unwritten law that the Hindu temple processions would not play drums for about 50 metres around the mosque and vice versa. Religious tolerance had contributed to secularism in the country. There was also recognition that despite belonging to different religions we are brothers. It is for the younger generation to ponder over why each religion has now compartmentalised. I lived in Triplicane in Chennai for seven years and clashes between religious groups during processions were unheard of. Now the same Triplicane faces tension during immersion ceremonies. When Pakistanis and Indians can be friendly and tolerant towards each other in a neutral country like the UK, what prevents them from being peaceful neighbours in South Asia?
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 15:35:44 +0000
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