If you live in Karachi and you have to get somewhere, and you have limited pocket money, or you like to save some cash because rickshaws can be E-X-P-E-N-S-I-V-E (there goes my lunch money), you probably took the local bus.
The vibrant metal boxes supported on 4 wheels propelled by the mere possibility that maybe it won’t tip over due to overcapacity.
Although public transport is for everyone, only a selected crop uses it. More often than not the middle and the lower classes. The compartment for women is one third, an exaggeration in my view since the driver’s seat is also included. #exposed
What is extremely unsettling is to find obscene pictures of women in the women’s compartment or at the back of the bus, often seductive with loud music blaring. A woman in a niqab with eyes donned heavily in kajal or a woman with paper white skin biting a thread. Such depictions of women are not only detrimental to the mindsets of sick people but also impose onto the women using public transport that they are seen merely as objects.
The hushed form of harassment is disregarded just because it may be a one-time trip for someone. But what about the ones that commute daily using the local buses? We must take a stand. For them.
Here is what bothers me and it should bother you too. Display of obscene/seductive pictures of women on public transportation is a form of harassment and such things should be taken down. ASAP.
This subject has troubled me since 2017. I am glad I took the time to write about it today. Hopefully, next time I write about it, I would have done something about it.
Let me know in the comments section below if you have ever noticed these pictures or if this is the first time you are seeing this.
