This year, I greeted Ramadhan with folks from the Naqshabandi order. Thankfully, I didn’t have to stay behind after work and so I got home, changed and left after sunset prayers, the month of Ramadhan already opening its gates of bliss.

Besides waking up before dawn for a meal and ending the daily fast at sunset, there are other supererogatory prayers and deeds that followers eagerly strive to perform.

The first Ramadhan at our new home, we were all happy to have a meal together at a table in a decent home for once. After having gone through the kinds of housing we’d been on.

I normally start slow, not going full out for the supererogatory rituals. I picked up momentum last Sunday at the usual Masjid I’ve been going to since last Ramadhan. 

My evenings are spent there after breaking my fast at home.

By the time I get home some 15mins shy of 11 and I am in bed by midnight and then I am up by 5am the next day. I am exhausted by the time I get home from the Masjid, but its time worth spending, its time when I am really living.

I have a shot of the obligatory strong coffee [to stay awake and alert at work], after my morning meal. I see all the essential vitamins and minerals flooded to death at the caffeine attack in my system. I actually visualize tiny atoms screaming and running for their lives and for my health every time I down my cup of coffee.

For now, I decided to take time out from the Masjid on Saturday. I was occupied in the evenings over the weekend, but yesterday, I felt I needed to stay home.

Sometimes I feel like I go off tangent on the spiritual curve when I develop a routine, which inevitably becomes mechanical for me. I get the feeling that I am moving too far away from God or that I am not sincere with my deeds, because if I were at home in my own private moments, I wouldn’t have performed the rituals I normally perform in the Masjid.

So I decided to remain home to perform my prayers at my own pace. I look forward to nights I spend at the Masjid. ..Even then, I often feel the need to remain home on some days, to wake in the middle of the night on my own, when it is easier to go back to bed with no one to motivate me to wake up, to perform my extra prayers at my own will. Even if I don't wake up, I learn about my own state of spirituality.
Its just my way of spending Ramadhan:-) Masjid prayers would resume soon:-)Wont be long before I will miss it.