The Holy month of Ramdhan comes once a year and for me this month means a lot. Like every year, this year too I waited for Ramdhan eagerly. The first day was a bit difficult. We woke in the house just before the Fajr prayers and gobbled up the obligatory sehri which would support our stomachs for the entire day almost for sixteen hours. My son had already calculated the number of hours and kept on telling everyone how extensive the sunlight hours were going to be. The length of the day didn’t deter us as we were determined to keep fast. Ramdhan brought a sense of change in some of the individuals of the household. The poor boy like son rendering us help in domestic chores who earlier hardly offered prayers started to offer prayers and fasted regularly. Once we asked him not to fast which angered him. The transformation in the boy prompted me to think that the same change would have taken place in every individual. But I was wrong. The local mutton seller shot the prices up to the sky owing to the demand for his mutton. I visited his shop to buy some mutton and gave him the money prescribed for 1 kilo of mutton, but the butcher clearly wasn’t amused at my gesture. He returned my money with this message that I needed to pay more for the mutton. I asked him the reason and he failed to give me one. Days later, I was buying vegetables at the local green grocer and I was saddened to find the soaring cost of vegetables. I was kicked in the teeth. Everyone is selling the vegetables at this price and this is the time to earn, he said. The same story with the fruit and date sellers. I returned home with aggrieved memories. Later, I came to know from others in my office how the black marketing and hoarding had started extensively in Kashmir. I was baffled when a friend of mine told me how the local grocers, butchers and green grocers had dumped the majority of essential commodities in order to sell them at high prices. I told my family about the dishonesty that had crept into the society. Normally people should have slashed the prices owing to the sacredness of this month, but in turn they indulged in black marketing and over pricing. That is disappointing.
As we celebrate Eid, we need to seek pardon and cleanse ourselves from the sins for ever while making the month of Ramdhan as the basis wherefrom we can start.   
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