Eid Mubarak!: Ramadan comes to a close

This weekend is Eid ul-Fitr, the celebration at the end of Ramadan. Ramadan was an interesting time here, I have never lived in a place where religion was such a pervasive and public force in society. The fasting was something that I did not take part in because I get too cranky when I don't eat. The point of the fasting is the feel the hunger of the poor, and Ramadan is a time of increased giving to the poor as well. However, the iftar dinners that break the fast are generally so plentiful amongst the truly rich that many GAIN weight as often they will eat and then eat and then go to bed.
Ramadan also brings in many new beggars to Dhaka, and an increased sense of the desperation of poverty. Crime spikes during Ramadan, a phenomenon consistent with times of giving and celebration in other parts of the world.
As a part of the culture of giving alms, there is a custom of giving large bonuses to the people who work in one's service. Amongst foreigners, this is of course more money than would be given by the Bangladeshis. Our cook is Christian, so we decided to just give her the day off and give her a fat bonus at Christmas. However the guards of our building, and some of the minor employees (like the woman who takes the trash from our apartment to the bottom) also demanded "Baksis" (pronounced baksheesh) for Eid. This was a little strange, as in western culture most gifts are received not demanded. However here the practice is to basically keep bugging the presenter of the potential gift to make sure that the giver knows it is his/her obligation to give the bonus. We took some umbrage to the practice of bringing it up every time we saw one of them saying "you need to give Eid baksis." Of course it wasn't that much money, and we gave to bonuses, but it certainly left us with the impression that our gift (for truly lackluster service in the case of the guard) was less appreciated than expected. I wanted to say "I need to give you basksis huh? well maybe you need to be awake if I come home late so I don't have to hop over the locked gate!"
By far the best part of Eid here is that we got the last two days of our work week off! Finally some time to do some writing and catching up on everything! I am falling behind in grading some speeches....
We also will be using the STAYCATION as a chance to check out some parts of Dhaka that we can currently not explored, specifically the old down town area (far greener than our neighborhood, and with some great old structures and monuments).