"I Spoke to Him for Just 5 Minutes… And It Changed My Life Forever"

It was an ordinary Thursday afternoon in Lahore. The sun hung low in the sky, casting a warm golden hue across the quiet street. I had just come out of my university, headphones in, playlist shuffling through lo-fi beats. My mind was cluttered with the usual—assignments, deadlines, and the gnawing fear of a future I hadn’t figured out yet.

I took the longer route home that day, hoping a walk might help clear my head. As I passed a narrow alley behind the old library, I saw him—an older man, sitting on a broken bench near a small tea stall. He wore a simple shalwar kameez, dusty with time, and a pair of sandals that had clearly walked too many miles. A small thermos sat beside him, and in his hands, he held a notebook—its pages yellowed and scribbled with notes, maybe poems or prayers.

I wouldn't have noticed him at all if he hadn’t looked up and said, “Beta, waqt hai zara?”

(“Son, do you have a moment?”)

I almost walked past. I had my earbuds in, after all. But something about his voice—gentle, steady, and strange—made me pause.

“Sure,” I said, taking off one earbud.

He patted the space on the bench next to him. “Sirf paanch minute chahiyein. Phir chalay jaana.”

(“Just five minutes. Then you can go.”)

Out of sheer curiosity—or boredom, perhaps—I sat down.

“You look lost,” he said. Not as a question, but as a fact.

I chuckled. “Everyone is.”

He smiled, nodding like he’d heard that answer a thousand times. “But some are brave enough to admit it.”

We sat in silence for a moment. I didn’t know what to expect—maybe he’d ask for money, or tell me some weird story. But he just kept looking straight ahead, as if watching something I couldn’t see.

“You know,” he began, “when I was your age, I wanted to become a writer. Thought I’d change the world with my words. I carried around this notebook everywhere.” He held up the one in his lap. “Same one. Same dreams.”

“So… what happened?” I asked.

“Life,” he said simply. “I got married. Took a job I didn’t love, but paid the bills. One compromise after another, and the dreams—well, they didn’t die. They just got quiet.”

I looked at him, unsure what to say. There was no bitterness in his voice. Just calm acceptance.

“But,” he added, “the real tragedy isn’t that I didn’t become a writer. It’s that I stopped believing I could.”

He turned to face me, his eyes sharper than I expected. “You’re still young. You probably think you have all the time in the world. But the truth is—time doesn’t wait for anyone. Not even the dreamers.”

A lump formed in my throat. I didn’t even know why. Maybe because I had recently started doubting myself. Maybe because I hadn’t written anything in months, afraid of not being good enough. Maybe because someone I didn’t know had seen right through me in seconds.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “Here,” he said, handing it to me. “I wrote this when I was your age. Read it when you feel like giving up.”

I took the paper, folded it, and put it in my bag. I wanted to thank him, to ask his name, but he stood up.

“Paanch minute ho gaye.”

(“Five minutes are up.”)

He picked up his thermos and walked away down the alley, his steps slow but sure.

I sat there for a while longer, staring at the bench where he’d been. The tea stall guy didn’t seem to notice anything unusual, as if the old man had been sitting there for years and no one ever really noticed.

That night, I opened the paper. It was a short poem, handwritten in Urdu, the ink slightly faded:

خواب وہی سچے ہوتے ہیں

جو نیند سے نہیں،

خوف سے جاگتے ہیں۔

“The only dreams that come true

are the ones that wake you—

not from sleep,

but from fear.”

Something shifted in me.

That night, for the first time in months, I opened my laptop and began to write. Not for a class. Not for a grade. Just for me.

Since then, I’ve often walked by that same alley. I’ve never seen him again.

Sometimes, I wonder if he was real at all. Maybe he was just a figment of my imagination—an echo of my conscience. But the crumpled poem in my drawer says otherwise.

And every time I doubt myself, I read those lines again.

Because sometimes, all it takes is five minutes… and a stranger… to change everything.