With Mahira Khan attending Toronto International Film Festival this year, moderating a conversation as part of the festival’s Community Impact programming and receiving an award recognising her contribution to cinema, Pakistan and South Asia get another chance to be part of global conversations.

Mahira’s presence at TIFF represented more than just another celebrity appearance. She arrived as an established name, with an audience behind her that stretches from Pakistan and India to the South Asian diaspora and drama aficionados around the world. 

There is, of course, the fact that Mahira’s appearance at TIFF also made headlines for something else altogether: it marks the moment that she revealed she is expecting her second child, 17 years after she first became a mother when she gave birth to her son Azlan. Mahira talked to Images about navigating pregnancy so many years after she first gave birth. “It’s very different this time, and definitely more challenging. The last time I was pregnant I was 24. I’m 41 now, so I’m literally a different woman… emotionally, physically, in every possible way.” “And then there’s the fact that I already had a life that was very much in motion. I have a grown-up son. I have my work, my routines, my independence. I had a version of what I thought this stage of my life was going to look like. To suddenly find myself starting this journey again after all these years has required a real emotional adjustment as well,” she said.

“You imagine a lot of things for yourself and for your life, and this wasn’t necessarily one of the things I had imagined at this point. But we plan and then God plans, and of course His plans are supreme.