Eid is for children

There was not much for us adults to do this Eid, but wonder whether it was really Eid. I know that if Mufti Muneebur Rehman wasn’t Chairman of the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee, no one would let him within 500 yards of any building housing a TV channel, but as long as he is Chairman, every Eid, he will hold the nation hostage and that too in full colour and live. This is not the first time he has hogged TV time by delaying the Eid announcement. People are so anxious because they want to know whether or not to do their Eid shopping, which is merely for clothes and shoes, not because they are concerned with whether the Eid prayer they offer is on the right day or not. And there are those who do not even offer the Friday prayer, let alone the five daily prayers, and for whom the two Eid prayers are the limit of their praying. Yet these are the ones who take the most interest in the moon sighting issue. Perhaps? What perhaps? It must be vital to these people that the only prayers they offer in the course of the year should be correct. With the result that there were Eid prayers offered on Tuesday (in the NWFP), Wednesday and Thursday (in the cities of Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Sialkot, as well as in some mosques of Lahore). Just to be on sure, somebody should have waited until Friday. I’m wondering at even the Thursday people though. They obviously started fasting one day after everybody else. Why did they wait for Eid to announce this?