The man who rented out time

 


Urban Fable | The Man Who Rented Out Time

By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)

🕰️ “If you don’t have time, rent mine.”

That was the slogan scribbled on a rusted placard outside a small basement shop in Lahore’s old city, right beside a forgotten tandoor and an antique bookstore that only sold blank pages.

No lights. No neon. No online booking.

Just an old man, eyes like moth-eaten clocks, sitting behind a dusty desk.
People called him "Ustaad Waqt."

How Did It Work?

People rented hours, days, sometimes moments.

  • A tired mother rented 2 hours of rest. When she woke, the dishes were done, the baby fed, and she didn’t remember crying.
  • A CEO rented 3 hours to write poetry under a tree.
  • A university student, panicking before finals, rented 24 hours—came back fluent in organic chemistry.

“Where does the time come from?”
“From those who waste it,” he would whisper. “There’s no shortage.”

The Price?

Not money.
Memories.

You gave up a birthday,
a kiss,
a victory,
a childhood game,
a sunset that once made you cry.

The more time you needed, the more personal the memory had to be.

People left smarter, calmer, more accomplished.
But slowly… emptier.

One woman came back a year later, wildly successful, and couldn’t recognize her own daughter.

The Addicts

Some began renting every week.

  • A lawyer bought enough time to win all her cases—but forgot how she met her husband.
  • A young man rented time to keep gaming all night. Eventually, he forgot what daylight looked like.
  • A poet sold his first love’s memory for a single golden hour of inspiration.

He wrote the perfect poem.
Then burned it.
And wept—without knowing why.

The Warning Sign

Inside the shop was a wall covered in slips of paper. Names. Times. Payments.

At the very top, one message was etched in nail scratches:

“Even stolen time runs out.”

The End of Time

One morning, the shop vanished.

The alley was empty, the sign gone. In its place, carved into the wall:

“Time cannot be bought. Only lived. Only lost.”

Some still say he appears on lonely nights, where clocks run backwards and sleep won’t come.

But now, instead of renting time,
he just asks one question:

“What would you give... to get it back?”

🪞 Moral of the Tale:

In the race to do more, be more, earn more—we forget that time isn’t earned.
It’s not downloaded, saved, or rented.

It is spent.
Or wasted.
Or cherished.

Once gone, not even the wisest man can rewind it.

📚 Read more haunting urban fables that reflect the madness of modern life and the magic we left behind—
Only at farazparvez1.blogspot.com

Step in, reader. Time waits for no one.


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