An Indian boy just 12 years old was offering opium and hashish on a scrubby patch of land outside the village of Maqboolpura on a recent day. His cellphone rang incessantly as he proudly related that he earned hundreds of dollars a month dealing drugs and playing cards.
Soon, a young man who called himself Sonny approached, hood pulled down over his head. He, too, was dealing in broad daylight to finance his heroin habit, and he had a special offer: high quality heroin for $45 a gram.
It does not take long to be offered drugs in Maqboolpura, not far from the Pakistani border. So many of its men have died from drug use that the village is nicknamed "the place of widows."