My mother hates women who cry too easily on screen.

“What’s the point of weeping?” she mutters, remote in hand, eyes rolling as she scrolls past thumbnails of tear-streaked heroines.

We sit on different sofas, always. I keep my laptop open even when we’re watching the same show - partly because I like being a few episodes ahead, partly because it gives me plausible deniability. She hogs the television. I let her. Occasionally, I complain just to feel like I’m still fifteen.

This is our ritual. Our truce. Our strange, fragile bond that only survives when it comes with subtitles and ad breaks.

We both love Pakistani dramas. She calls them “classy,” with a surprised respect, as though elegance was the last thing she expected. She praises the writing, the subtlety, the long pauses loaded with meaning. And then, in the same breath, she'll casually say something that makes me wince. A broad brushstroke about “those people,” a stray comment here, a generalisation there. She doesn’t mean harm. Or maybe she does—in ways she hasn’t examined.

She does deep dives, the way I do when I hyperfixate on something: into plotlines, religious customs, wedding rituals, and character arcs. And yet, despite all this cultural investment, the subtle Islamophobia peeks out in the pauses. She drops these things like facts, then moves on. I don’t challenge her. We’re already on separate sofas.

My mother is a feminist. A “don’t-depend-on-men”, “earn-your-own-money”, “never be the second option” kind of feminist.

Her feminism is thorough, occasionally terrifying, and absolutely uninterested in nuance. It’s wrapped around a narcissistic rage I’ve spent years trying to name and then un-name—like some unsolvable equation. It feels less like feminism, and more like brand management.

She raised me to be free, but never to contradict her. To be independent, but punished me for setting boundaries. She taught me to think critically, to question systems—just never to question her.

Recently, not in my teenage years, but now, as a fully employed, tax-paying adult, she offered me some life advice. Remote still in hand, serious face on. “Just be careful,” she said. “Distractions come in many forms. Boys, girls, women—anyone can lead you astray.”

I stared at her.
The inclusivity was… unexpected.

My mother: feminist, and now, queer-aware moral police.

If she knows, she hasn’t said anything. But I’ve clocked the warnings. The one-size-fits-all caution tape wrapped around my life choices. Stern. Loving. Deeply unasked for.

She says people should be free to live how they want. And I believe her. But I still won’t tell her about myself.

Because I don’t know if I’ll get the protector of misfits, or the woman who once went silent because I “looked distant.”

We don’t talk about the past. We don’t talk about the things that hurt, or bent me, or the versions of her I had to survive.
But we watch.
We talk about plot twists. About bad husbands and worse mothers-in-law.
We discuss Mahira Khan’s eyeliner like it’s policy.
We gasp in sync. Sometimes we laugh.
Sometimes I catch her watching the screen during a mother-daughter fight — her face still, unreadable. Once, she frowned, “What kind of a mother is she?”
I wanted to say, “You tell me.”
But I didn’t.
I just turned the volume up.

We don’t sit close. We don’t touch. But something flickers across the screen. Not reconciliation. But a kind of peace.

The kind that’s built on co-watching, co-surviving, and shared judgment of bad dialogue. The kind where we meet halfway—in living rooms and storylines and carefully edited empathy.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough for now.
Even if we don’t talk.
Even if we never will.
We watch.