Two magnificent romance tales
💖 Romance Tale #1: “When the Monsoon Came Back”
Urban Romance | Lahore & Karachi | Fate, Family & Forbidden Love
By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Retired Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)
“Some storms are not meant to destroy. They’re meant to return what was lost.”
🌧️ Act I: The Karachi Rain and the Lahore Past
Zoya Hadi, a fiercely independent Karachi-based documentary filmmaker, travels to Lahore to film a series on disappearing heritage homes. Her latest assignment? The crumbling Qasim Manzil, a pre-Partition mansion now claimed by a trust and tangled in family disputes.
What she doesn’t know is that Qasim Manzil belongs—at least partly—to her college ex-love, Haider Shah, a UK-returned architect with his own wounds and grudges.
They haven’t spoken in eight years, not since a bitter breakup caused by family pressure and ego clashes. Now, fate pulls them into the same haunted home where the walls remember what they forgot.
👥 Act II: A House Full of Secrets
As Zoya films interviews with the extended family—a proud matriarch, a greedy cousin, a divorced poet aunt, and Haider’s estranged younger brother Affan—she begins to uncover the hidden loves, betrayals, and sacrifices that tore this family apart.
Haider is trying to redevelop the mansion into a modern heritage museum, while Zoya wants to document it as a symbol of cultural decay. They clash at every corner… until a hidden bundle of old letters, found behind a mirror, reveals that Zoya’s late father once loved Haider’s mother—a love that could never be.
🔥 Act III: Passion Rekindled… and a Choice
Haider and Zoya begin to fall into old rhythms—late-night arguments that turn into conversations, teasing that turns into gazes. But their path is complicated:
- Zoya is secretly engaged in Karachi to a rising politician, Rayan, whom she doesn’t love.
- Haider is being pressured to marry a London-based cousin to finalize a real estate merger.
As the monsoon hits Lahore, Qasim Manzil begins to leak and crumble—forcing everyone to spend a few nights under one roof. In those stormy nights, truths pour out.
🌙 Final Twist: Love, the Museum & the Moonlit Rain
Zoya decides to leave for Karachi, breaking her engagement in silence. But before she boards her train, she receives a flash drive anonymously. It’s Haider’s redesigned blueprint—a museum and community space named after Zoya’s father, preserving both heritage and history.
She returns to the mansion.
They stand in the rain.
And for the first time in years, Haider says softly:
“This time, let’s build something together. That doesn’t collapse.”
❤️🔥 Romance Tale #2: “The Stranger Who Wrote My Diary”
Romantic Mystery | Islamabad | Literature, Identity & Longing
“Sometimes, the person you’re meant to find… finds you first—through your own words.”
📓 Act I: The Anonymous Manuscript
Sara Taimoor, a successful editor at a publishing house in Islamabad, receives a handwritten diary from an anonymous sender. It's beautiful, melancholic, poetic—and eerily similar to her own life experiences.
The diary describes a girl named "S" who faces the same heartbreak, same dreams, and same regrets Sara once penned in her private journals—which she lost three years ago in a Rawalpindi café.
As Sara becomes obsessed with the entries, she launches an unofficial search to find the sender. All clues point to a writer known only as "M. Ali", a reclusive novelist who vanished after one bestselling book.
🧩 Act II: The Puzzle of People
Sara’s journey takes her across Islamabad’s literary circuits, chai addas, and writers’ retreats, where she meets:
- Imran, a charming librarian who may not be who he says he is.
- Rabab, a bitter ex-lover of M. Ali who warns Sara against “falling into fiction.”
- Taimoor, Sara’s childhood friend turned publisher, who secretly harbors feelings for her.
- A mysterious beggar outside Saeed Book Bank who recites quotes from the lost diary.
Each encounter adds pieces to a puzzle. But the deeper Sara goes, the more blurred the line becomes between reality and romantic imagination.
💔 Act III: The Reveal & The Real M. Ali
Just when Sara begins to give up, she finds a second diary—this one titled “The Editor Who Never Knew She Was the Author”.
It reveals that M. Ali had never existed. He was a pseudonym. The person behind the diary… was Taimoor, her childhood friend.
He had found her lost journal and began filling in its missing chapters—as if their lives had run parallel, only inches apart.
But Taimoor had never confessed, fearing she'd love "M. Ali" more than him.
🌌 Ending: Fiction, Fact & Forever
In a candle-lit book launch organized by Sara herself, she finally reveals to the crowd that the most beautiful story she’s ever read was written by someone who was always beside her.
And that day, under the soft Islamabad sky, she finally says to Taimoor:
“If this is a fiction, don’t ever stop writing it—with me.”
📣 Conclusion: Stories of Love, Memory & Destiny
Both these tales unravel modern love in Pakistan—against backdrops of family history, artistic longing, and emotional entanglement. They ask:
Can love survive time, tradition, and untold truths?
🖋️ Which tale touched your heart more? Share your thoughts in the comments.
📚 Follow our blog for more heartfelt stories, mysteries, thrillers, and weekend fiction indulgence.
By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Retired Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)
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