In the second part of Volume 2, Shams moves through rage, boredom, prayer, and flashes of dry humor. Ramadan brings hunger; politics brings noise. The office air grows heavy with gossip. Religious language slips in not as a sermon, but as habit, routine, even sarcasm.

As politics and violence close in, he becomes watchful and quick to anger. The traffic at Tehzeeb-ul-Ikhlaq Chowk turns into a daily spectacle, a sign of what he calls the city’s “mass psychosis,” where private desires crash into public behavior.