Friday 9 August 2013

EID KI NAMAZ. MY EID PRAYERS

My father used to take us along us to the eid prayers. I could remember the same as back as to early 1960s. We used to live in the nazimabad aurangabad quarters. I must be around 7 or 8 years old. The nearest place of eid namaz gathering used to be the Paposhnagar Graveyard. There might have been other such gatherings at other nearby areas too, but my father used to go to the paposhnagar graveyard, perhaps because the graves of my grandfather and younger sisters were there.

The distance from our aurangabad quarters house was not too much, so we used to walk. But later on when we were shifted to Nazimabad number 1 house, we used to go to the eid namaz at paposhnagar by rickshaw. It had been always been a nice cool morning, and i always liked that.

After the completion of the eid prayers, we used to visit the graves of our grandfather and younger sister. We had always been joint by the husband and son of my aunt, who used to live in the Nazimabad Bara maidan area. After offering our fateha at the graves, we all used to walk back to their house. As part of the annual routine, my father had been buying one kilo of mixed sweets from one particular shop of the main road. At that age i always wondered why that shop owner and his children were supposed to work on the shop when all other children and the elders were enjoying eid.

We used to visit the house of the sister of my father. He used to give one rupee eidee to all of her children, alongwith that packet of sweets. After staying with them for a short period of time, we used to walk back to our home, which was more than a kilometre from there. Again on the way my father used to buy some swseets (at times jalebees) for us.

We continued to maintain the same routine till 1975, when the new eidgah was opened very near to our house. It has been called the Nazimabad Petrol pump eidgah. It was at a distance of about 200 metres from our house. Thence onwards the old routine of walking through the fixed trail, changed. We started visiting our aunts home at some later day during the eid days. The routine once changed became a permanent change/

When we shifted to our last house, (Rehman Plaza) just behind the Prince Cinema on the M.A.Jinnah Road. in 1985, we had had to find some other eidgah to offer our eid prayers. On our first eid at this new house, my father was totally undecided as to where we should go to offer our eid prayers. I had recently bought a Suzki jeep, and we went out early on the Eid day to find some suitable eidgah. I still wonder, as to why we went down the M.A. Jinnah Road heading for the Mereweather tower, instead of going towards the Numaish and Gurru Mandar area. Well whatsoever might be the reason, in the end we found ourselves in the
(?????????) hall, near the Lighthouse cinema. (I am forgetting the name of this historical hall. It is an old historical hall where once Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar was tried.

Well we offered our prayers in this hall. When the prayers started we realised that it was the eidgah of Shafi muslims. Although they are not different, yet some acts in the namaz were different from what we had been used of over years. Well it was not of much importance. The eid prayers were offered.

For the next couple of years till 1991 before i left Pakistan for good, we reverted back to the Nazimabad Eidgah to offer the eid prayers.

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