ver since I moved to Lahore, I have come to realise that it’s a city that never really sleeps. Like an old radio, it hums and hollers even at the fringes of night.

As a child, whenever there was a late-night or early-morning airport pickup for relatives living out of the country, I was quite amazed to see people outside. For women, moving through the noise comes with a constant calculation: how visible am I, how exposed, how safe? What is my safety plan in the event of a threat? Do I have my family members on speed dial? With the rise in memes trend on social media, there’s an added fear in that calculation: what if someone videos me without my consent and I find myself all over Tiktok?

I was thinking all these things when the rickshaw rattled, like it was holding itself together out of sheer will, bringing me back to that moment. The engine coughed and groaned announcing its protest in my ears, the scratching sound clawing at my temples like I was an unwilling listener at a rock concert. Every day going back and forth between home and my 9-to-5, I find myself thinking this ride alone has made me age 20 years.

And yet, wedged in the backseat there’s a strange sense of relief, because in the rickshaw I am less likely to be cornered as compared to a quieter, air-conditioned ride. I say this knowing full well the privilege it is to even have that choice, to decide between a car and a rickshaw, to have the money to ride one at all, to have work that takes me places. This isn’t ungratefulness; it’s simply looking at the city through a safety lens, from the perspective of a woman travelling alone, constantly on guard.

For women, moving through the noise comes with a constant calculation: how visible am I, how exposed, how safe? What is my safety plan in the event of a threat? Do I have my family members on speed dial?

For women, in cities like Lahore or, for that matter, anywhere in the country, every single step is taken after measuring their safety. They have to navigate everyday harassment, unsolicited comments from passersby or ‘accidental’ touches in crowded places. There have been incidents of assault during a ride booked online; sometimes, attempted abductions. It can be worse. We pass these stories along in hushed voices, the warnings seeping into our own choices before we even realise it.

As my rickshaw rattles past a row of fruit stalls on Multan Road, the driver curses a motorbike swerving too close as if the lanes are mere suggestions for him. I hold on to the side rail. Around us, the city keeps going, bargaining, honking in a sensory overload. For Lahore, it’s just another night. Maybe that’s the strange thing about living here: you learn to hold gratitude and weariness in the same breath. You learn to keep moving with the city, alert, grateful, just a little tired from all the calculations it demands.

Ayesha Sarwar Nooral is a clinical psychologist with extensive training in multiple domains of psychology