It is still three and a half years until the elections, but I have already stopped using the word musalmaan. It stuck in my mouth, clinging to the threshold of my throat as Aisha recited a verse from the Quran, for something that did not particularly need reciting a verse from the Quran, and I wanted to exclaim ‘How musalmaan can you get?’ like I always do. A non-practising Muslim to a practising one, both bearing the brunt of our disproportionate identities. I said, “How M can you get?” instead, leaving the most feared, the most hated word in the world dangling at the tip of my tongue. Much like the conversations I have left unheard, the Instagram posts I have left unread, in some fear that my words, my actions are inconsequential for the suffered and the suffering, in more that I am becoming one of those ‘armchair activists’, wrapped comfortably in the bubble of my job and my degree, my privilege that allows me to bribe my way to fundamental rights, to quoting the Constitution.
I check if I can quote the Quran. I remember five verses, the shortest. I do not know their meaning, and the Arabic words sound almost crude on my non-native tongue. I have been told, on several occasions, by many people that a non-practising non-conforming Muslim doesn’t exist. You either wholeheartedly and entirely submit to the will of Allah or you do not. I agree. I have not prayed in four years, more like I have not prayed like a Muslim in four years and I am quite certain I don’t even remember how to and I say all my prayers to the universe now.
My mother had asked me to read the Quran in Urdu, to understand what my God wants to say to me. I can’t decide if I am glad I didn’t. How long before I forget these five short verses? I ask myself if I want to. To forget and hide behind the saffron safety of my nation, my people. To disappear in my bubble when in my doctor’s waiting lounge, I sit very still as news channels launch their attacks on Muslims and become even more rigid as my name is announced by his assistant, an unmistakably, undeniably Muslim name turning every head in the room towards it. To undo the many fights I have had as a child as other children called my God a lock with a missing key, or that I was a meat-eating undesirable dirty being.
Or to remember. To remember and stay in the comforting softness of the verses I have grown up with, with my religion, my people. The humming of my mother’s tilawat after namaz. The assurance that my friend had read a verse before we left for our exams. The safety of the ayat-al-qursi above the door of our new house. I ask why I have to choose. I decide I should reread the Quran. It is three and a half years until the Lok Sabha elections. I wonder when will my bubble explode.
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