A Musing: Festivities, Holidays & Photographs

I have been braving the crowds at shopping malls for the past two weekends, including for the past three days straight, and all I can say is, thank goodness the celebrations are only once a year! I have worn my sandals out trooping all over the floors of: KLCC, Subang Parade, Mid-Valley Megamall, PKNS (the best place for kids’ baju Melayus) and the new SACC Mall at Shah Alam, and the purse gets sadly depleted each visit.

We are not even having people over this Eid, as we shall be with my in-laws up north, but as usual, I get stricken by last minute guilt that I haven’t given the house due attention and get caught up in a panic over cushion covers and placemats. We just bought lighbulbs to replace the ones that have burnt out at home and it was a shock to realise we need more than twenty. How come we never noticed the dim areas of the house?

Rushes to the store aside, I am very, very sorry to say goodbye to Ramadhan. The fasting month is always a wonderful time for spiritual refreshment and quiet reflection. Without food in your tummy (and caffeine in your system), your senses are more sensitive to both environment and people, your thoughts are calmer and your emotions deeper. I tend to have more lucid dreams during Ramadhan – and this month, I dreamt a lot of my Mother. Her absence is the biggest reason why a weighty chunk has wedged itself – permanently, it seems – somewhere in the middle of my chest.

Despite people pooh-poohing the superficiality of the celebrations, the festive season gives families a great reason to get together and friends to renew contacts. There are a few people who my husband and I would visit only a few times a year, and Eid, Deepavali and Chinese New Year give us the excuse for these visits. In urban areas, one cannot just “drop in” on friends anymore, given everyone’s hectic schedules and need for privacy, so festive ocassions are a good foil to renewing friendships. It is also during festive seasons that one realises afresh how diverse and unique Malaysia’s cultural make-up is – and I agree with this lady’s thoughts that the individuality of each culture and race in Malaysia should never be submerged in the quest for national unity.

I am very much looking forward to the holidays though once more, I will probably find that I have more to-do than I have time. Apart from some fiction reading that I hope to catch up on, I would like to rethink my planning system, work on my MBA case study, finish up a work project that needs big chunks of quiet time, decide on a holiday programme for the boys, and do some creative writing. All this before next Saturday when the husband will have some friends over to the house for Raya, and the whole day will be spent in a flurry of preparation.

I will remind myself to snap some photos during the holidays and I give myself until the end of the year to organise the print and digital photos that I have. I am not good with photographs and feel guilty each time I visit my neighbour as she has family photos placed all around her abode – really, everywhere you turn, you see her beautiful family looking perfect. It is also the trend nowadays at weddings to display slideshows of the bride and bridegroom when they were clueless babies and toothless toddlers. During one such slideshow at a particularly lavish wedding, I whispered to my husband that we are going to be in deep trouble when our kids get married because a lot of the photos – of them clueless and toothless – have disappeared. Either that, or we had neglected to take the snapshots in the first place. Our hope is that by the time the boys get hitched, the trend will have changed, although to what, I do not know.

Here’s to the festive season, and all the joy, panic, relatives (wanted or not) that it brings.

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri. Eid Mubarak.

Filed under: At the Stores, Malaysiana, Personal Note, Speculations