I am writing these lines immediately after breaking my 22-hour fasting with two apples and a glass of sweetened hot water – in a particular fashion of how the Hindu women break their Teej fasting.
Teej [more info at NepalHomePage and Wikipedia] is a festival known for the fasting as the women fasts whole day without even drinking a drop of water in belief that it would bring fame, progress and money to their husbands. They dress in red, sing, dance in groups and worship Lord Shiva as the myth behind the festival talks about him and his beloved Goddess Parbati.
It is believed that Goddess Parbati kept a very difficult fasting, not even swallowing his saliva, to get Lord Shiva as her husband. Unmarried girls too keep the fasting hoping that their future husbands will be among the best.
I am not a female and the reason behind my fasting is not religious. I neither performed puja in the morning and evening as the women do nor visited any temple to worship god or goddess. Rather, I watched the Twenty20 World Cup cricket match between Sri Lanka and Kenya during the afternoon and went to office in the evening.
My reason behind fasting was two. The first to know how it feels like to stay without food or drink for a whole day and secondly, to satisfy my adventurous or, you can say lunatic, nature.
I am happy that I could do it though everyone who knew me won’t believe it. One of my friends at office had told me yesterday that if I could neither stay at a place for whole day nor fast. Some even wanted to have a bet. I didn’t know if I could do it because I can hardly resist hunger. But I did it and I learnt that well, if I have strong commitment, I can do things.
My experience of remaining hungry for 22 hours was that it is not that hard. I felt a little numb right now and a very, very little dizzy, but overall, I never felt like I should go and eat. At around 11 AM and 3 PM, something in me shouted food, but I resisted that and then I didn’t even feel like need to eat.
However, I must salute thousands of women who fast on the day because I know its not as easy for them as for me and their motive behind fasting is a kind of selflessness. You may like to call it ’male domination’ or something like that and I too personally DO NOT like women fasting for their men, but its a tradition and that’s won’t go away soon.
My 22 Hour Fasting was also my attempt to find out how much I can do for my beloved who was fasting for me!
