By Asif Raheel
It was a quiet village once. A slow place, where the sun touched the earth with softness, and laughter rose like smoke from the courtyards. People lived by the seasons — sowing, reaping, cooking, singing. There were arguments, yes, but they ended by dusk. No one stayed angry long.
Then the boy returned from the forest. He held something strange in his hands. A smooth object that blinked and hummed and obeyed.
At first, they laughed.
“What is it?” the old barber asked.
“It does what I tell it,” the boy said. “Faster than I can.”
They watched him feed grain into it, and it came out ground, fine as dust, within minutes. He spoke to it, and it played songs they had never heard. Women clapped. Children danced. The elders frowned but said nothing.
Soon, the village changed. More machines came — things that milked cows, cleaned homes, cooked meals, told stories, did sums, remembered things no one asked them to.
People no longer met at the well or under the neem tree. Why would they? They had no need to borrow sugar, no reason to gossip or share grief. The machines had answers.
Fathers stopped telling stories to their sons. Mothers stopped humming while cooking. Children learned to speak less — the toys spoke for them.
No one noticed when the baker stopped singing at dawn. Or when the potter stopped greeting neighbors. They were all busy — efficiently, constantly busy.
But there was a silence growing, heavy and unfamiliar.
One evening, the old barber packed his blades. He went to the boy, now a man surrounded by blinking, murmuring things.
“You brought a ghost into this village,” the barber said. “And it’s eating us from the inside.”
The man didn’t look up. His eyes were fixed on a glowing square.
“I don’t feel anything anymore,” he whispered.
Outside, the sky was unusually dark. The neem tree stood still. No wind, no voice.
The toy hadn’t just made their lives easier. It had taken something too. Time. Touch. Tenderness.
They hadn’t known.
But now it was too late.
* * *
Asif Raheel is a short story writer and poet from Pakistan whose work explores themes of silence, identity, and modern disconnection. He is passionate about existential literature and postcolonial narratives.