Sunday 20 / April / 2025
“Zakat (charity) is not only a duty but one of the most important pillars of Islam and being a Muslim, charity for me is of paramount importance,” said Oneza Tabish, a woman of many skills and talents, who uses them to help the community.
A banker by profession and a financial analyst by qualification, Oneza’s passion revolves around food. “I am the Founder/Administrator of What’s Cooking Oman, a recipe-based Facebook page with about 10,000 members. I also contribute my signature recipes to the Times of Oman’s Lifestyle section that are published every fortnightly.”
Since cooking is her passion, she makes sure she is involved in charitable causes throughout the year, and more so during Ramadan. “I have a group of 20 workers in my complex and out of these 14 of them fast. Every year, I prepare a special Iftar for them comprising chana chaat, dahi bada, samosa, fruit salad, pakodas, dates, and juice.”
Before Ramadan, she buys Ramadan boxes that contain 5 kilogram of biryani rice, an instant drink pouch, cooking oil, semolina, flour, chickpeas, 500 grams of coffee, custard powder, gram flour, macaroni, and so on.
“This box is distributed to the workers in and around my complex as Ramadan grocery for them. This is very helpful as they need not buy groceries all month.” She added, “The response is heartwarming as more than clothes and money, the needy feel the most satisfied when they are fed good food.” Shortlisting places and people is something that she avoids doing while distributing the Iftar boxes. “For me, there is no criterion for shortlisting people for Iftar boxes or Ramadan boxes. Any person who is hungry or needy, I try and feed him or her in whatever way I can.”
However, it is not only during Ramadan that Oneza spreads her generosity across the Sultanate. “The members of my group and I contributed towards feeding biryani to about 350 workers at the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) last year. We raised OMR450 for this and handed this amount to the student consumer establishment of SQU, who in turn helped us buy the biryani packets, along with biscuits, juice, and water for the workers and distributing the same within the SQU premises.”
She added, “This year too I will be leading a charity drive involving food distribution on the same lines.” Apart from feeding the needy, there are other social causes, such as financing a wedding within a poor family and educating children, who cannot afford school or college fees that are too close to Oneza’s heart.
“I am involved in small charities run by individuals here, such as financing weddings of girls back in India or their education. Just recently, my friends and I collected money for a maid, whose daughter was diagnosed with cancer. I also collected about 50 blankets for the Chennai Flood Relief victims and handed it to an organisation here involved in sending the same to India. I regularly donate clothes and grocery items to the drop boxes at various malls and hypermarkets.”
Feeding the needy is what gives Oneza inner peace and satisfaction. “As in Islam, charity has to be discrete, where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand donates, so I don’t like to mention or talk about it much. I know that Allah would bless me in some way or the other for my kind acts as it is Him alone that I ask from.”
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