The Prayer That Changed My Life

The Prayer That Changed My Life

It was the worst day of my life.

I had just been rejected from my third job interview in a row. Rent was overdue. My mother was sick. And I had only twenty rupees left in my pocket. I sat alone at the corner of Lahore’s Data Darbar shrine, not praying — just breathing. Or trying to.

I had stopped believing. In fate. In blessings. In God.


---

That’s when I saw him.

An old man, tall but bent, wearing white clothes so dusty they almost matched the ground. His beard was long, his eyes sharp — not kind, not cold, just… knowing.

He walked straight toward me. I looked away, assuming he was a beggar.

He sat beside me, without asking.

> “Worried?” he said.



I didn’t respond.

> “Lost?”



I sighed. “Completely.”

He smiled.

> “Then maybe it’s time you stop asking questions... and start receiving answers.”




---

He placed a rough hand on my shoulder.
It was warm — too warm, like it carried a fire that didn’t burn.

He leaned closer and whispered something into my ear.

A short dua. Barely five words. In a language I didn’t recognize.

Then he stood.

> “This prayer isn’t mine,” he said. “It came to me in a dream, from someone who lives between this world and the next.”



I was too stunned to speak.

He turned, walked through the crowd… and vanished.

Literally. Vanished. I looked for him for ten minutes. He was gone.


---

That night, strange things began.

My mother, bedridden for weeks, asked for tea. On her own. Without help.

My phone, dead for days, buzzed to life with a message from a company I had never applied to. They offered me a small freelance writing job — international client, online work, no interview.

I took it.

The payment came the same day. Enough for rent. Enough for groceries. Enough to breathe again.


---

Over the next few weeks, life kept climbing upward — but not slowly. Rapidly.

Work kept coming. I began saving money. My mother started walking again. My brother, who hadn’t called in a year, suddenly reconnected. I even found a free scholarship course on a site I randomly clicked.

Things were too good.

I should’ve been happy.

But I wasn’t.

Because something felt… watched.


---

The prayer the baba whispered — it wouldn’t leave my mind.

Every time I said it under my breath, something shifted around me. I once said it on a bus, and the driver narrowly missed what would have been a fatal accident. I said it at the hospital, and the power returned during a blackout — only to our floor.

I tried searching for the prayer online.

No results.

I described it to a friend who was fluent in Arabic, Persian, and even Hebrew. He had never heard it before.


---

One night, I had a dream.

I was standing in a desert, under a full moon. The sky was blood-red. And the baba was there, standing beside a well. His eyes were not sharp this time — they were glowing white.

> “You’ve said the prayer too many times,” he warned.
“Now it listens to you.”



> “What do you mean?” I asked.



He didn’t answer.

He just pointed to the well.

Inside, I saw my own face — screaming.

I woke up sweating.


---

Since that night, the world became… different.

People started noticing me more. Strangers greeted me by name. One woman on a train cried and said, “I saw you in my dream last night, reciting the words.”

I became afraid.

Was this really a prayer?

Or a summoning?


---

I returned to the shrine where I met the baba. I waited all day.

Nothing.

But as I walked away, I saw something scratched into the wall, hidden behind a cracked pillar.

The exact words he had whispered.

And one more line beneath it:

> “This is not a gift. It’s a test.”




---

The success continued.

I was offered a full-time remote job with a European client. I published my first article. My mother recovered completely. I even bought my first motorbike.

But with each success, the pressure inside me grew heavier. Like I was being pulled forward… toward something I couldn’t escape.

One night, I stopped saying the prayer.

For a full week.

And everything paused.

Emails stopped. Money slowed. Calls missed. Even my body felt heavier.

So I whispered the words again.

And just like that — light returned.


---

I realized then: The prayer had become a key.
A door was opened somewhere — and now, it wouldn’t shut.

I started seeing shadows in mirrors. I once found a coin on my desk with a symbol I’ve never seen again.

And last week, a letter came to my house. No stamp. No name. No handwriting.

Only one sentence typed on old paper:

> “You were chosen. But chosen for what?”




---

I still don’t know who the baba was.

I still don’t know what the prayer truly means.

But I do know this:

My life was changed. By five words. Whispered by a stranger who disappeared.

A prayer that doesn’t exist in any book.

A prayer that listens… and watches.

And maybe, one day, will ask me for something in return.