The Holy Diet: Ends With Sadness and Blood…!

I coined this term ‘The Holy Diet’ at the start of the holy month of Ramadhan about a month ago. I thought it was kindda catchy and hip but at the same time, it inserts the feeling of holiness to the act of fasting. As it should be. Having said that and seeing that my friendster account nowadays are very ‘busy’ and ‘hot’ nowadays, some people (not anyone I know of) asked me what is Ramadhan. (Okay, roll your eyes now)

My answer was simple. It is the performing of the ‘holy diet’ that God asks us once in a year. It is carried out in the month of Ramadhan which is the 9th month in the Muslim calender. The act of fasting is also unique in a way that the benefit of fasting is said to be a direct gift to God. As Allah said and quoted by the Prophet Muhammad pbuh,

“Every act of Adam’s descendants is for themselves, except fasting. It is meant for Me alone, and I alone will give the reward for it.”

Having said all these, Alhamdulillah, i managed to perform this year’s fasting without any problem. In fact, I would say that this is one of the first times that i didn’t have any problem at all in the whole month of Ramadhan. With thousands of assignments (not literally) and other commitments, I managed to pass all that with fying colours (I think).
But the question remains whether I had pleased God?

As a‘last minute push’ for doing good deeds in this holy month, just now I went to the National Blood Center to donate blood. I am an apheresis donater, so, the whole process of donation would take about an hour and they advised me that it would be better for me to break fast first and donate blood after the Maghrib prayers. I obliged. (they gave free food for buka puasa, how can I argue?). Haha..

When the process started, I finally had a time to just lay back and relax and think for a while. It is somehow a reflection of everything that happened to me in the past month. And I said to myself, “Damn! When I am going to stop being this active!”. Hahaha..

And as the whole process goes on, my machine keeps beeping saying that my blood pressure is going low. Keep in mind that i just break fast with some nasi goreng and a glass of water, I set aside the rest of the food to eat afterwards. (greedy as always) What happened was, as the whole process ends (53minutes to be exact), there were 3 nurses talking with me. Just chatting usual things as I know a lot of the staffs there because I am a regular.

Suddenly, the whole world started to look dim. Realizing that something is happening to me, I immediately said to the nurse that I felt dizzy. And for the next 5 to 10 minutes, I didn’t know what had happened. I had fainted!

When I opened my eyes, there were 5 person around me. (The earlier 3 nurses and another 2 female doctors). I was positioned with my legs higher than my head. I was surprised as I had donated blood more than 60 times in my whole life and never once anything like that happened.
I asked what happened and they said that during the whole process, there should actually be a pint of water going inside my body as the blood is drained out. The water pint is there, but the nurse didn’t release the button to let it flow into my body. Which means, about 600 ml of white blood and platelet had been drained out of my body but no fluid went into my body!

The nurse frantically apologized. I said that its okay, but i may consider sueing them if I had died. The nurse’s face went blue. It was supposed to be a joke. How am I going to sue if I die. It was a big burst of laughter afterwards. It is truly my style to make fun of even the most serious things and at the most unexpected time. Hahaha!

The doctor then explained that, despite what happened, I managed to finish the whole process and then “went to sleep”(as she said). She said usually a patient faints in about 20 minutes if no water enters the body.

That stuck into my head like lightning. These are the moments, that you can actually feel the power of God. I feel truly blessed. Here i am, an ordinary and useless guy, trying to make a small change in the world, and even I got noticed by the God. If it wasn’t Him making sure that I am still breathing as usual despite the problems, who else have more power to do so? If anyone couldn’t feel this sense of holiness, I couldn’t say more. For me, it is a fact learned by first hand experience. And God had wanted me to learn it the hard way.

From the start, I had always wanted to please everyone by doing a lot of good things to my friends, relatives and even to a lot of people that i don’t know of. I don’t know whether all these people are pleased by whatever that i did to them.

But deep down in my heart, now runs a good feeling, that somehow i had managed to please God.
Are there anything more important than that?

AZMI KHAN
30th Ramadhan 1429/ 30th September 2008

p/s: the diet thing never worked for me though

:)