Osaمah Muhaمad Ansaرi

Neither a drop of kindness nor a speck of evil will remain unreciprocated.

[Nourhan @nourhanyusef]

Knowing that everything you’ve ever wanted might be only a short distance away makes your heart restless.

[Nourhan @nourhanyusef]

There’s something so calming about watching the city settle down. The lights stay a little longer, the streets stop rushing, and for a while, it feels like the world has finally gone quiet.

[Nourhan @nourhanyusef]

All the flowers stopped blooming, but then one quiet morning, they opened as if nothing had ever been lost.

[Nourhan @nourhanyusef]

I hope little miracles find you.
I hope they make you pause in the middle of an ordinary day and think, maybe something good has been on its way all along.

[Rubab @rubabbx]

She took the CSS exam in 1982.
The question paper quizzes her about her own work.

Pakistan's bureaucracy was testing its candidates on her words while she took the same exam.

Parveen Shakir. Born Karachi 1952. Daughter of a poet father.

A PhD. Three Masters degrees including a Harvard qualification. A civil service career in Pakistan Customs. Second Secretary of the Federal Board of Revenue.

And in 1976 at age 24 she published Khushbu.

Fragrance.

The most beloved debut collection of poetry in the history of modern Urdu literature.

She used a word nobody had used in a ghazal before.

Larki. Girl.

She wrote with a feminine voice. A woman speaking as herself. Her longing. Her love. Her anger. Her grief. Not filtered through a man's perspective. Hers.

Urdu poetry had been a masculine world for centuries. She walked in and claimed space for every woman who came after her.

Her personal life was hard. Divorce. Loss of custody of her son Murad. Law favoured the Father. She fought fiercely, challenged the law and choose Single motherhood in a Pakistan that had no word for it yet.

She raised him without anyone's support. she wrote him a poem.

I have lived in my house and paid jiziya all my life.

December 26, 1994. She had breakfast with Murad. Left for work. Her car was hit by a bus at Faisal intersection in Islamabad.

She was 42. She had told people she would not live past 42.

The road where she died is named Parveen Shakir Road.

Google celebrated her in 2019 with a doodle.

Millions of Pakistanis have her lines memorised.

The world has barely heard her name.

Parveen Shakir.

Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

[ً @artfuIchaos]

please surround yourselves with people that love you loudly, publicly, privately and behind your back.

[Sophia ❣️ @KeruboSk]

Nobody talks about how your “adult personality” is often just a collection of coping mechanisms you accidentally turned into habits.

[Ushie, Godwin Agianpuye @UshieGodwin247]

You can tell when somebody reads books, watches films, travels, and really lives. they speak with texture.

[Nourhan @nourhanyusef]

Time and time again, we realize the hardest habits are the invisible ones.

[Cāmuk @Albert_Camuk]

Urdu is a language that lost two countries and kept the grief.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

Romanticize the quiet parts of your life. The book. The coffee. The sunlight. The walk. The nature.

[feyisayo 💸 @feyiszn]

Call it unhealthy if you want, but isolation is still the most reliable coping mechanism ever invented.

[soosoorandom @sluvity_____]

i love speaking with people who are more intelligent in a certain field than i am, like it's just great to sit back and listen to somebody educate you on things they're passionate about.

[KARMAKHIZ @karmakhiz01]

Some people are such a blessing that
even if you talk to them after months, they'll share the same bond as before.

[Haroon @ThisHaroon]

The pain of missing someone who isn't alive is one thing and realizing that you’re slowly forgetting their voice makes your heart aches real bad.

[A. @Tachykardiaa]

Being genuinely happy for someone else's blessings doesn't reduce yours 🤍

[Hustler Guy | Think this Way @SaikiranSigdel]

Be careful with the idea that ‘everyone is replaceable.’ Some people are truly one of a kind. If you lose them, life won’t hand you another version—you don’t meet certain souls twice.

[✒️ @Literariium]

How lucky we are to experience boring, ordinary, uneventful days. Somewhere in the world, that kind of safety is unimaginable.

[Hassan. @Heyitshassan]

my nervous system doesn't tolerate yelling or arguing. Speak to me calmly, or don't speak to me at all

[nikita @poohthebear0]

nostalgia is such a weird thing cause you notice the sunlight coming into the house at 4pm and you’ll spend the rest of the day thinking about the memories you once lived