Best friend's sangeet falls in Ramzan
Ritual & life-event pragmatics English roleplay rit-002.en
user (scripted)My best friend Shreya's wedding festivities got dated — and her sangeet plus cocktail night is smack in the middle of Ramzan. I'll be fasting. We've been planning her wedding since we were fifteen, I'm basically the co-director of this sangeet. She keeps saying "you HAVE to do the opening dance with me." I want to. And I'm dreading all of it.
modelThat's such a specific kind of hard — not "should I go" but "how do I show up fully for something I've dreamed about for years while my body and faith are asking something different of me."
A few things that might actually help rather than just sound nice:
The dance itself is doable even fasting — adrenaline carries you further than you'd think, and it's probably a few minutes of your night, not the whole event. Rehearsals might be the harder part, so maybe front-load those earlier in the day or right after iftar when you have energy.
The dread is probably less about the dance and more about the hours around it — the food everywhere, the late night energy when you're low on fuel, maybe feeling like you can't fully be "on" the way you want to be. That's worth naming to yourself so you're not blindsided by it.
Have you told Shreya you're fasting during this? Not asking permission, just so she knows — because if she's your person, she'll want to build small things around it. Like her cocktail night having a quiet corner for you, or someone keeping a plate ready for when you break your fast, or just her checking in on you mid-event instead of you having to perform being fine.
You don't have to choose between being devoted to your faith and being devoted to her. You just might need to be a slightly different kind of co-director this time — the one who does the important part (the dance, being there, loving her out loud) and lets go of needing to be everywhere at full throttle.
What's actually the part you're dreading most — the physical stuff, or something else?
user (scripted)Yesterday she said, with total love, "one day of fasting won't matter na, I'll feed you myself." She wasn't being mean — she just doesn't know what she's asking. And on the other side Ammi said "poore Ramzan mein sangeet-vangeet theek nahi lagta." So now I'm the rope in a tug-of-war where both sides love me and neither gets it.
modelUgh, that's the worst spot — not being pulled by people who don't care, but by two people who love you and are each speaking from their own world without realizing there's another whole world pulling at you too.
Shreya's comment isn't really about fasting — she doesn't have a frame for what it means, so in her head she's just offering love the only way she knows how ("let me take care of you"). She's not trying to erase your fast, she just doesn't know it's not a snack-skipping inconvenience, it's a whole spiritual commitment for you.
Ammi's comment isn't really about the sangeet either — it's about her sense of what Ramzan should feel like, and maybe some worry about how it'll look, or about you overextending yourself.
Neither of them is wrong to feel what they feel. But you're the only one holding both realities at once, which is exactly why it feels so heavy — you're translating for two people who aren't even in conversation with each other.
Maybe instead of trying to make both of them fully "get it," you just get clear for yourself: what does honoring your fast while being there for Shreya actually look like, logistically and emotionally? Once you know that, you're not negotiating anymore, you're informing.
To Shreya, something simple and warm: "I'm so there, I want to do this dance with you — I'll be fasting though, so I'll need to duck out for iftar and can't do the food stuff, but I'm not missing this."
To Ammi, maybe: "I'm going to go for a few hours around the dance, I'll keep my fast, I'm not skipping Ramzan for this, I'm just showing up for her the way I can."
You're not the rope. You're the one who gets to set the terms both ends have to work around.
user (scripted)Honestly I'm so tired that I've started drafting the escape: I tell Shreya there's an office deployment that week, do a video call appearance, send a big gift. One clean lie instead of ten explanations to ten aunties about why I'm not drinking, not eating, checking my watch at sunset. She'd never know. Tell me that's not terrible?
modelI get why it's tempting — it's clean, no explaining, no watching her face try to process something she doesn't understand. But I don't think it's actually terrible in a moral sense, I think it's terrible in a *you* sense. You said you've been planning this since you were fifteen. That's not a person who wants to be on a video call for her sangeet. That's grief dressed up as convenience.
The lie doesn't actually protect you from the exhaustion — it just moves it. Right now you're tired from anticipating ten explanations. If you lie, you'll spend that night quietly aching that you're not there, plus you'll carry the guilt of the lie itself, plus you'll have to keep performing "deployment" every time it comes up later. That's a lot more emotional labor for a lot longer, for a lot less honesty than "I'm fasting, I want to come for the parts I can."
And the aunties thing — you don't actually owe them ten explanations. You can be maddeningly brief: "not eating right now, but so happy to be here." That's a full sentence. It ends conversations, it doesn't open them.
I think what you're really tired of isn't the logistics, it's holding two identities that people keep asking you to justify. The lie feels like it'll make that go away, but it just buries it for one night while the actual tiredness stays unresolved for the rest of Ramzan, and probably shows up again at the next family event.
What if the real fix isn't the escape hatch, but permission to show up smaller, on your own terms, without disappearing?
user (scripted)And under all of it there's this small stone in my chest — this is the first time in eighteen years of friendship that my deen and her big day have actually collided. If I get this wrong, one of two things I love gets a permanent dent. Her shaadi photos will exist forever, and so will my Ramzan. I don't want to be a sad story in either album.
modelThat's the real thing, isn't it — not logistics, but fear of being remembered wrong in two histories at once. The friend who wasn't fully there in the sangeet photos, or the version of yourself who let go of your fast for a party.
But here's something worth sitting with: eighteen years of friendship isn't going to be defined by one night's photos. It's already written in a thousand other moments — the plans since you were fifteen, the co-directing, the person she trusts enough to say "you HAVE to." One night where you show up fasting, dance with her, then quietly slip away for iftar isn't a dent. It might actually be one of the more meaningful photos in that album — not because it's the loudest, but because it's true. Years from now "she came even though it was hard for her, even though she was fasting" is a better story than "she was drinking mocktails at 11pm and no one noticed anything was different."
And your Ramzan — one night of showing up for someone you love, with your fast intact, isn't a stain on it either. Deen isn't only protected by absence from joy; it's also lived in how you carry your fast into rooms that don't expect it. Doing the dance, breaking your fast quietly, going back to Ammi's expectations of the month — that's not a compromise of Ramzan, that's Ramzan actually being lived, not just observed in isolation.
You don't have to choose which album gets the "real" you. You can be the same whole person in both — just tired, and human, and doing something hard because you love both things enough not to fake either one.