Sunday sermon is something many people religiously attend, but some just don’t get with it. Even if they do end up going, they get bored beyond their wits, and start wishing they were anywhere but there. I can say I identify with those people, in a way. Frankly, I’ve never ever believed in religious rituals. Now that doesn’t remotely mean I’m an atheist. Not even an agnostic at that. I firmly believe in God. I just never got to the point of believing that a certain ritual, if followed a certain way at certain times can invoke the blessings of God, like many people, especially Indians, think. And as self contradictory as I may sound, I still follow many of those rituals. In my defense, I do it for my family; anything to keep them quiet and happy until one day when I own a house in which I can act the way I want.

So I do follow rituals, but I actually find many of them baseless, especially the one that most Indian people harbor, about a certain fast at a certain time of the year. Some people will already know what I’m talking about, and for those who don’t, it’s Karwa Chauth. For the uninitiated, it’s a time when the woman of the house doesn’t even ingest a drop of water from before sunrise till the rise of the full moon. And that, as weird as it may sound to many of you, is supposed to lengthen the life span of the man of the house. It’s something most women in India unwaveringly follow, but some men, as a handful of Indian movies have shown, fast along with their wives as well, out of pure love. Now, I never found any meat to the ritual, but I actually found the feelings behind that act beautiful. I mean, if a girl can actually withstand thirst and hunger for almost the entire day for me, I would of course feel happy, because it just goes to show how much that girl really loves me.

But that half baked belief of mine turned complete one fateful day a few months ago, when that one girl told me that she’ll do it for me. She had done it for people other than me, but that didn’t matter. I even acted cute about it saying that I was jealous of those guys. And somehow, that past didn’t bother her as well. The look of pure love she gave me at that moment, with her words clearly saying how much it meant to her to be doing that for me, was enough to touch the deepest recesses of my heart. She knew I would appreciate every little bit of it, unlike others before me, and I knew then that I wanted to make it as special for her as possible. So I promised myself, that very day, that I would do the same for her. I decided that I, the ultimate food lover, who fasts as a namesake every week just to make others happy, would properly do it once for myself, because it would make me happy beyond measure to be doing it for someone I truly loved and appreciated every minute of the day. I made a promise to myself that I would shift my entire belief system and do what I never ever thought I would do. Of course I made that promise before we broke up, so many of you won’t understand my fixation with still adhering to it. But as I have told you before, I don’t break my promises. Did I mention that the fast isn’t broken until the woman, or the man in my case today, looks at the face of their better half after moonrise? Ah yes, how will I be able to do that?

Well, I did it. And I will give the curious types among you every detail of how. The procedure is like this. I had to wake up before sunrise, at 4, to have something that sustains me throughout the day. I somewhere knew that if I slept off, there was a good chance even two alarms wouldn’t wake me up at such an odd hour. So I somehow kept myself awake through the night. The difficult part had already started for me. With the amount of physical toil I’ve taken in the past few days, it was the biggest chore not dozing off when I so wanted to. And as the clock struck 4, and I thought I had finally hit the mark, I fell into slumber. That didn’t go too well now did it? The fast isn’t broken if you don’t eat early, it is just a scientific advice to have something in you that keeps you up and running through the day. But I hadn’t eaten anything after 12 the night before. I do vaguely remember drinking some water before I slept, so guess that will count. But I didn’t really feel that lack of food when I finally woke up at 6 and went about my daily grind. All the way uptil noon, and I was finding it hard to stay awake. Science was catching up with beliefs, but I had made a firm commitment, and I would stick to it. By later in the afternoon, I couldn’t take it anymore, and dozed off. I woke up in the evening to find my friend had betrayed me, and told her about it.

Now, I wasn’t really planning to let her know until this blog post, because, as I said, I was doing it for myself, as an ode to her, which isn’t an issue for publicity. She blamed me for not telling her that this day was here already, but I had thought that she of all people would have kept track herself, and that she didn’t mention it earlier because she didn’t intend to fast this year. But looked like she did. And as I looked around at all the umpteen women gathered at my place for the ritualistic offerings that evening, I sorely missed the lack of her presence amongst them. She did agree to meet me, despite how messed up she felt, and we had arguments about my avoiding behavior over the past few days. But still, the way we parted was more than what I had imagined, and I know we will be back on better terms than before soon. I went back to look at the moon and watered myself while looking at her picture. And I finally broke bread at 10.30 in the night, which made it almost 24 hours without food. I had done it.

I must say I’m proud of myself. I am not of course proud of not telling her, looking at how bad she felt about it. But I went a whole day without food, which is huge, looking at the foodie I am. But more than that, I can now feel that love, which I sometimes myself doubted was true or not, filling my entire existence. I can openly say that today, I have given the biggest proof of my love to myself. Today, I have actually done something and meant it with all my heart. Today, I’m the man that I never thought I would be, and I am proud of it. So until I bask in my feeling of self satisfaction and respect, until I have more to talk to you about, I will let you have nothing but cheers!