The re-publication of my 2012 Mother's Day submission for Dawn had a lot in store for me. I, however, while sitting in Brooklyn three years later, had little idea of the flood of delighted to disgruntled messages awaiting me in my inbox.

The “in a country like Pakistan” phrase had positioned me as a traitor – without my knowledge – among the holier-than-thou patriots of my motherland, and I had insulted scores of people by making the unmentionable point to mention the obvious: existing patriarchal constrictions placed on the brilliant women we know as our mothers in our country.

This was misunderstood as maligning the country but what people forgot was how patriarchy – male-dominance – is not a Pakistan-only phenomenon; patriarchy is practically global.

It was this gender-driven inequality and humiliation that Anna Jarvis, founder of the Mother's Day holiday in US, wrote to Woodrow Wilson about in 1914, spearheading a campaign to persuade the US President in setting aside the second Sunday of May as a national day for recognising the unpaid and unrewarded labour of mothers throughout the country (that, in case one forgets, still remains the case today).