Man is a strange creature; he lives in the same settlement for years, breathes the same air, yet some corners remain hidden from sight, unknown to consciousness, and foreign to the heart.
I have also been living in Pipar for almost a year. Pipar is not just a town, but the tehsil of our village, you could say it is an extension of our village's existence. But alas, there was a place within Pipar itself that I was unaware of until today.
The incident happened in such a way that one day a trivial need—a craving for samosas—led me down an unfamiliar path. I followed a man. The path became narrower, the atmosphere became heavy, and an unknown suffocation began to descend on the environment.
Suddenly a voice came from behind:
“Sir! Why have you come here?”
This sentence was not a question, but a warning—but by then I had stepped on the threshold of a world I did not know.
The person I reached also involuntarily said:
“It is not right for you to come here, you have come to a very wrong place.”
But the truth was that the mistake was not of the place, but of my ignorance.
The people sitting there suddenly startled. Some started hiding things, some were averting their eyes, and some were glaring at me as if I had committed an unforgivable crime—as if I were a murderer, or had violated someone's honor.
Those were not eyes, they were questioning arrows; that silence was not silence, it was an accusation.
After a few moments, the curtain was lifted. It turned out that it was not just any "ordinary" place, but a gambling den—a world where the blessing of sustenance turns into loss, and the sweat of labor is wagered on a gamble.
At that moment I realized that evil is not always in faraway forests, sometimes it is breathing behind our own courtyard.
The paths that we consider trivial and leave, those same paths lead to a social wound.
This incident was not just a coincidence for me, but became a mirror—of my society, and of my unawareness.
Indeed!
Sometimes a person who goes out to buy samosas, collides with the bitter realities of society.
*Barkatullah Qasmi Afi Anhu*