SOUL SCRIBBLES

“COMPLETE  fasting the entire month and you’ll get RM30 on the first day of Syawal.” This, I remember, was my first  duit  raya , given to me by my late father when I was 6 years old. It was actually RM1 a day for each day of fasting. He would tell us this on every eve of Ramadan as an inducement to fast the entire month. If he had included  sahur,  we would have failed miserably as my brothers and I preferred sleeping over eating in the wee hours of the morning. My brothers and I received the same amount until we each reached the age of 18. I still got the full amount even if I didn’t complete the month as I had a valid reason as to why I could not fast. And our other  duit raya  came from aunts and uncles when we visited them at their houses with our parents or when they came to ours. We also got money packets from my father’s non-Muslim friends who visited us on the first day of Raya. We never got the opportunity to venture on our own o...

WE are nearing the end of the first week of Ramadan. Some of my friends have settled into a new routine, having made changes to their working arrangements and lifestyle. Among them, there are those who have turned down offers of overseas travel during the month and those that stretched into the Raya period. Some even frowned upon others who do travel during Ramadan as if it is an unthinkable thing to do. There are those who have rescheduled meetings, even important ones, until after Raya. The government and some companies have shortened the working hours (lunch-break hours are reduced) to accommodate those having to go home early to prepare break-of-fast meals for the family and then rush to the mosque to perform the terawih prayers. So, with this and more, Ramadan is perceived to be a month of reduced working hours and productivity. In fact, a 2013 Harvard Kennedy School of Government research by Filipe Campante and David Yanagizawa-Drott had established causal evidence for a n...