for those of u who aren't familiar with the word, raya is a malay word use to mean Eid...usually used for Eid-ul Fitr, the festive day marking the end of the Ramadhan. Raya means festival, not that i'm goin to get into semantics because my malay pretty much sucks LoL this year it fell on the first of october 2008 or 1429 of the Islamic calendar and this year marks the first in 3yrs that i'm celebrating it at home! so allow me to provide with what i hope is a detailed description of what i did on the eve of raya and the first day of raya...
after isya prayers, i can hear from my house the takbir coming from the mosque. i dont really know how to explain takbir thoroughly in english so please forgive me for the shortcomings in this explanation. takbir is the act of saying the phrase "Allahu Akbar" which means God is great and so i take it that takbir time is a formal declaration/expression of faith. the takbir that is recited during raya:
| Allaahu akbar, Allaahu akbar, Allaahu akbar | |
| laa ilaaha illAllaah | |
| Allaahu akbar, Allaahu akbar | |
| wa li-illaahil-hamd |
and means:
God is the Greatest, God is the Greatest, God is the Greatest,
There is no deity but God
God is the Greatest, God is the Greatest
and to God goes all praise
So from my house i can hear this going on from the mosque. that's one thing i love about staying in bangsar, not only can you hear the azan from the mosque you can hear the temple bells too. and i find that that is truly the reflection of what living in a multiracial and multireligious society is all about. well that's my opinion at least.
there's a certain sing-songy way of doing the takbir in msia. and ive heard countless arguments claiming that eid signifies a victorious time on behalf of the Muslims and so our takbir should be firm rather than sad and all sing-songy but personally i prefer the malay way of takbir and i have truly missed it. so taking this opportunity i decided with my aunt to go for a drive around KL and listen from a few mosques the takbir whilst checking out the decorative lights. we passed the bangsar mosque then headed to masjid negara and then to the klcc mosque.
we drove through dataran merdeka, jalan tunku abdul rahman and kg baru and the lights were beautiful. i find it unique how during a Muslim festival in a Muslim majority country it's eid lights that come out rather than christmas lights. i like both as both have different flairs. and again i cant tell you how appreciative i am of living in malaysia because i get to enjoy all sorts of decorative lights for all the festivals celebrated in this country. i hope this will last forevermore, ameen.
after about 9.30 the takbir usually stops and we were already on our way home. when i got home my mum was getting ready to go and get lemang (glutinous rice barbequed (?) in a bamboo shoot) and rendang (usually beef mixed with cocunut milk n a bunch of spices) the traditional dishes eaten during raya...i am so sorry that i suck at explaining all these things properly...
i didnt follow my mum, instead i had an early night because i had an early day ahead of me. sure enough after fajr (i slept again) and woke up to the sounds of takbir around 7-ish. the bangsar mosque usually starts the Eid prayers at 8.30a.m and so after donning my not-so-new but havent really worn them in over 3yrs clothes i waited for my aunt to go to the mosque...we got there just in time. i seriously believe that the mosque need to invest in better speaker sytems as i can hardly hear what the imam was saying making the khutbah not very enjoyable.
it was nice to see though that there were so many men there, until they had to pray upstairs at the women's area, masyAllah. it was also nice to see that people ranged from all sorts of economic background. bangsar has loadsa development going on and so is the hub of many foreigh labourers, and to see them decked in their best clothes and praying alongside some tan sri/puan sri/dato/datin is really a refreshing sight. thats what Islam is all about, no class barriers n no racial barriers.
one thing i didnt particularly like were the amount of beggars around. im not anti-beggars per se, i felt quite bad that i didnt bring my wallet with me, but i was just wondering why do we still have beggars around? really where does all that zakat (alms) go to? one thing that really touched me was this boy, i think possibly 7/8 yrs old, he got from his dad a stack of RM1 notes and he gave to each beggar RM1 and i thought this boy is soooo sweet, to have such a generous streak in him, not many kids these days are that selfless. i was humbled by the gesture of this boy that i had to include him in my blog =) may he continue being kind and generous and be showered with wealth and prosperity throughout his life, ameen.
after raya prayers we headed home where i did the traditional "ber-raya" with my mum and aunts...Eid is a time of forgiveness and so we seek forgiveness from each other for anything that we may have said or done, or something we didnt do but intended on doing, hence the whole "zahir dan batin", internally and externally. on a side note though, i think that we should also start forgiving each other for any wrongdoings during Ramadhan...
anyways, my eldest brother came over and then me n my siblings went to my grandpa's in klang. the journey there was surprisingly short i guess coz my bro drove rather quickly. it was quite hillarious coz as he turned the radio on shayne ward came on singing breathless. i exclaim "oooh shayne ward!" to which he responds rather shocked "you like shayne ward?" n i say "not his music but i think hes cute" at this point you can imagine the radio station was immediately switched hahahahahaha
in klang i met up with my uncles n aunts on my dad's side and my dad n my stepmum n all my other siblings. this is the first raya for me and second for everyone else, without my grandmother and i can tell you her absence is sorely missed and felt deeply. she usually busies herself about the house, makes sure everyone eats and talks to every single guest she receives. i see my aunts are trying to take on that role but its just not the same you know...may her soul be blessed by Allah and she be granted the highest paradise, ameen.
it was fun though to have that whole raya atmosphere again and to sit and catch up on the latest family gossip. stuff i missed out on. but it was also tiring explaining to everyone how i was on a gap year LoL another thing i found myself saying over and over again was "eh dah besar dah!" which basically means "ur all grown up now!
after my grandpa's we went to my grandaunts house all the way in bangi. on the way we passed a gigantic poster of lewis hamilton but i was too slow to snap a photo of it LoL it was fun meeting with people that i havent met for ages and people that always have some weird memory of me that i cant recall coz i was so tiny... call me conceited but i feel happy that people remember me fondly :)
after having really good food (again!) i headed to KLIA with my sis, younger sis n bro n cousin to send them all off to indonesia (celebrating eid with my stepmum's relatives). again it was fun. just really fun to be with family and have a bit of a laugh, i miss that i guess. having safely sent them all off my older sis n niece headed back to my dad's house coz my sis had to get something frm her car.
my poor niece was all broken hearted coz she plays with my youngest sister quite alot (theyre only months apart!) and couldnt accept the fact that she was "up in the air" so she was quite subdued during the whole journey back to my dad's hse...that's a rarity...anyways got to my dads house only to be greeted with more food! i prayed zuhr n my sis fed my niece...we were in my second youngest sister's (yes ive got loads of siblings, theres 10 of us all in all ok LoL) room and the only channel we could get was S-something-something-i-cant-remember that's direct from indonesia. we ended up watching this show called cinlok, a shortened version of cinta lokasi which directly translated means, love location ??? hahaha i think its supposed to mean location for love or something..i dunno its a reality tv show aboout someone liking a person but not having enough guts to confess or i dunno wat it was on about i was just laughing coz it seemed soooo fake! one of the girls ended up in a swimming pool...yes i was very much intrigued by this show...but i saw some of the trailers for their soaps n movies, looked really good n had some hot dudes in it. now this is one thing that i find so attractive about indonesian movies/dramas, they always have at least one good looking person be it a guy or a girl that would definitely shoot ratings up to the roof. then u turn on some low-budget lame-o malay drama n they dont even have ONE decent looking person. i mean c'mon, ur effects suck, ur acting suck, ur music suck wat else can u draw on but good looking ppl? n we dont even have that?!!! path-etic!
oKAY i stray from the topic at hand...after my dad's hse my sis cameover to my hse n met my mum n we ate some more hahaha and so my 1st day of raya concluded. i didnt visit many places but i met loadsa people that i havent met in years, some more than 3yrs! it was all in all d sort of raya that ive missed out on.
~Listening to Broken Strings by James Morrison~
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