fter a week of blowing through constant deadlines and deliverables for five clients, on Sunday, I find myself without having much to do. I check if my mother is done with her daily tasks and decide to go out for a drive with her. She, a housewife over 60 years of age, doesn’t let me drive. “You always drive when you go out with your friends. When you’re with me, you can relax, take a break,” she comforts me as she moves her hand dismissively at my concerns for her leg pain.

“I just need to tell the maasi she can go home now, then we, too, can leave,” my mother says. I check my phone to ensure it is in fact Sunday, a day when the maasi doesn’t usually come to our house. I also hadn’t seen her all morning as I was sequestered up in my room. Isn’t it Sunday today? Why was she called on a Sunday?

“Beta, she asked if she could work weekends this month because her son is getting married and she wants to save up some extra money.”

As we leave I excitedly jump at a WhatsApp notification from my sister. It’s usually a picture of her children this time of the day. I realise I haven’t checked the previous ten notifications in the family group. One sister has sent a video of herself at the gym — she goes every morning after the school drop, before her toddler wakes up from his nap.

I scroll up. Another sister has hit a milestone in her small business and bought her son a new video game setup to celebrate. The third is homeschooling her elder one, while the younger plays beside her on the rug. The fourth has sent a selfie of her family at the dinner table after a long day at work; the caption just: “My favourite part of the day.”

When we pull out of the street and into the city, Lahore starts passing us by one swarm of rickshaws and motorcycles at a time as we exit DHA. We merge into Main Boulevard, Gulberg, and almost immediately notice a young mother on a scooty maneuvering through them. A small child is perched behind her, arms wrapped around her waist, a school bag strapped to her front.

We pass the Liberty roundabout, where as always, the ‘wedding moms’ are out in their element. You can spot them by their gait — a hurried, determined march towards the silk shops, clutching fabric swatches like holy relics. Even though the fog-filled winter months are labelled the wedding season in Lahore, it is only these mothers who know it takes visits to a thousand vendors all year long to actually make those weddings happen.

I have spent my life viewing my mother as a fixed point in my universe, a stationary object that provides warmth. In reality, she and millions like her across this sprawling, loud, beautiful city are actually the ones in motion.

These are the matriarchs who can tell the difference between ‘rust red’ and ‘brick red’ from fifty yards away, all while keeping a firm grip on a toddler’s hand and calculating the catering costs for a two-hundred-person qawwali in their heads.

The city’s rhythm shifts as we approach Firdaus Market. The air grows thicker with the smell of diesel and roasted corn. My mother slows the car, her gaze lingering on the sidewalk. “She looks like she could be your age,” my mother says, nodding towards a female health worker waiting at a bus stop. The woman is checking her reflection in a shop window, adjusting her dupatta before her next house visit, unbothered by the noise around her.

We decide to stop at a grocery store in Model Town. In the SUV next to where we park our car sitting regally in the passenger seat, an old woman wearing what looks like gold karras in both arms is giving orders into a phone about the exact quantity of dhaniya needed for the evening’s karrahi. Inside the bakery, a tired-looking woman in scrubs — likely a doctor from a nearby hospital — is buying a chocolate cake, her eyes weary but softening as she checks her watch.

As we drive back through the dappled shade of the Canal Road trees, the sun begins to dip, casting long, golden shadows over the joggers and the families spreading mats on the grass. I see the mothers who have packed an entire kitchen into three tupperware containers, ensuring that even on a dusty patch of public land, their children eat like royalty.

I look at my mother, her hands steady on the wheel, her eyes focused on the road despite the ache in her knees she refuses to acknowledge. I realise I have spent my life viewing her as a fixed point in my universe, a stationary object that provides warmth. In reality, she and the millions like her across this sprawling, loud, beautiful city, are actually the ones in motion.

After pulling into the driveway, my mother turns off the engine and sighs, a sound of pure, earned exhaustion. “That was nice,” she says, already reaching for her bag to go inside and ready the evening tea.

I stay in the car a second longer. I think about all the women I saw just this day: the ones building, haggling, commuting, working, feeding… And I think about how none of them were standing still. I had spent my whole life thinking my mother was a fixed point when she was the axis aiding every motion, every part of our lives.

Nadia Ahmed Uqaili is a content strategist with over five years of global agency experience. She also writes short fiction on Substack. She can be reached at [email protected]