Eating out – another extravagance of our community. Hyderabadi Muslims are well known for their heartedness and magnanimity in spending unstintingly on the needy and doing other charity. At the same time they are equally famous for being spendthrift and extravagant. And this trend is at the peak in the month of Ramzan where they go overboard in helping out and reaching out to the needy and those in want as it is ordained by their faith. They spend magnanimously and feel a sense of satisfaction and gratification giving Khairat and Zakat. On the other hand they have become equally notorious at being spendthrifts and ostentatious. And are going overboard in simply blowing up money on needless and frivolous things.
True, Allah has admonished us not to be tightfisted, but he did not want us to go overboard and spend beyond our means and be wasteful.
In fact there is a specific Ayaat in the Holy Quran emphasizing that do not waste and be a spendthrift, Allah does not like spendthrifts. But the Hyderabad’s simply seem to ignore this diktat.
And now, with the advent of Cell Phones the Muslim community is embroiled in yet another excess. A needless expenditure that is costing the community 100s of Millions.
Just on Passing the Mubarak messages the community is providing the SMS companies Crores and Crores of Rupees.
O the 40 Lakh cell phones in the city 5 to 6 Lakh should be owned by the Muslims. The SMS companies first began providing free services to its users and got them hooked and then they stopped providing it for free and now seen to be laughing all the way to the banks. During Ramzan alone the SMSing goes up by nearly three times, during all the hours from Sehar to Iftaar and roughly it goes up to nearly 250 to 300 crore messages which cost from 100 to 150 crores of rupees. Which is a totally wasteful expenditure.
There is hardly anything worthwhile in it, they are just formal and often repeated greetings and wishes.
Sure, the SMS services are also used to send each other Ayaats and Hadis by some users and some really get to learn some thing new and worthwhile and some even forward it to others. But the majority of the messages are simply formal and frivolous.
The GHMC alone the Muslim community is providing a neat profit of one crore throughout the month.
And eating out is another new fangled trend which is sapping the community’s wealth. After a day long fast which is meant for them to realize what hunger and want is, they literally pounce on the Dishes after the Iftaar. What to talk of the scene at the eateries after Iftaar. People literally milling and hogging away like there is no tomorrow. And the delight and specialty of Ramzan. Haleem, wonder if Ramzan would be Ramzan without the Haleem Kiosks. Tones and tones of Haleem is prepared all over the city and all alike, the rich and poor spend on it openly amounting to tens of millions of rupees every day.
A good humoured irony – by the end of the month of Ramzan, most of the Muslims having fasted throughout the month, who ought to have lost a few pounds, on the contrary find themselves heavier by few pounds and pouches.