by Ejaz Khan ( @ejaz_k )

You might be grumpy at Sehri time. You might be grumpy at what is traditionally known as “lunch time” at any other time of the year.  Heck, you might be grumpy all day!
Traffic’s getting you mad, the local Imam is hitting Huzaifi tunes and taking longer to complete than last year. Your anxiety levels are spiraling out of control.

Is there a grumpy chacha in all of us ?
Yes, yes there is.

Ramadaan is the perfect month to iron out our bad habits. Self-restraint is the order of the day.
But what we tend to do is release the stress of zero food intake into a reason to be “aggro” about other things in life.
We need to maybe take a minute to reflect on our station before lashing out.
Such are the times we live in that with instant messaging comes instant gratification and on the flip side, instant anger.

So many of the scenarios I’ve received for the Grumpy Chacha series are “BASED ON A TRUE  STORY”-as people have sent through their fired up fathers/grandfathers/Husbands/sons behavioral patterns, hoping they would see the folly of their ways and change

And while our sisters wives and mothers read this nodding in agreement, they too are not exempt from retrospection. The character Juleikha,, wife of Grumpy Chacha, is a fiery character too. She often loses her cool too, but two wrongs most certainly do not make a right.

The most consequential aspect of our “Roza Got me” ways is that children are subconsciously trained to behave the same. They can throw tantrums in a supermarket “because I’m fasting and I’m hungry”
they can throw punches at school because “Fasting is tough this year”  – countless ready-made excuses for bad behavior which we have, without realizing, based on a pillar of Islam

Yet the fast is a means to reflect on the reality facing the poor, to empathize through the pangs of hunger and to truly sympathize through your charity and good actions to all.

As we listen and laugh at the ridiculousness of the grumpy chacha scenarios, let us ensure that this Ramadaan, we will exorcise him from ourselves, and be lighter, nicer human beings.
In this month and throughout the year.