Hyderabad: Sehri camps to help students and bachelors in the month of Ramzan
Hyderabad: More and more social and religious bodies are coming forward to arrange sehri, the predawn meal, for students and bachelors staying in and around the city these days.
While it’s been a long-standing tradition of arranging iftar camps in the evenings for the benefit of rozadaars (fasting Muslims), readying the predawn meal for people who find it difficult to arrange sehri for themselves is becoming increasingly common.
“The trend picked up in the last couple of years as philanthropists realised that there was a high number of bachelors in the city. Getting up early after offering the late nightly prayers in Ramzan and preparing food is a Herculean task for them. So many of them register themselves at the camps and eat their predawn meal,” said Adil Ahmed, who is organising a camp at Mehdipatnam.
“Some organisations allow affluent persons to sponsor the meal for a fixed number of persons every day,” said Abdul Majeed Khan, an organiser. The camps are organised at function halls, mosques, hotels and educational institutions. “A few owners collect nominal rent halls while others don’t charge anything. At educational institutions and hotels they only take money for the power consumed,” said Syed Ahsan Ali, who is organising one such camp at Masab Tank.
A vegetarian meal for a person on average cost Rs 40 per plate, but the cost goes up to '100 if the menu includes non-vegetarian dishes.
Ilyas Shamshi, a social activist said that the trend picked up after people realised that iftar is arranged at every mosque and many shops that have Muslim employees working there, even if the owner is a non-Muslim.
“People literally have a lot of options where they can break their fast, but it’s not the case when it comes while choosing a place for sehri. So slowly the trend of organising community sehri meals started and now all neighborhoods where a large number of bachelors stay have one at least one such camp,” he said.
M.A. Khadeer, an architecture student from Mahbubnagar stays in Asifnagar. “A local organisation organises the camp where I have my sehri. This is now the second year, I have registered myself for the camp. It's a blessing for people like me, since it's really difficult for us to cook late at night in Ramzan,” he said.
