We love ugliness!

Islamabad: Coming from afar, you drive into town and now call your relative or friend, seeking directions as to how to reach their place.

“I have crossed this point that you told me about. Now what direction should I take?” “Oh! It’s easy. Just follow the blue (or yellow) signboard that comes up next with the directions clearly marked on it. It won’t be much of a problem really.”

Now you are driving cautiously, keeping an eye on the looming signboard ahead while negotiating with the unruly traffic on the road. Here it comes in full view, the signboard displaying directions. ‘What the ... !’ (you can add the ‘expression’ of your choice in the blank i.e. ‘hell’, ‘heck’ or, whatever!)

The signboard is there all right! But it is mostly covered with the posters and handbills. Now those posters could be of some political party, some religious party or even some quake, advertising one’s products!

The few grotesque lines visible behind these posters could be anything out of an Agatha Christie mystery but not fit to fall in the category of ‘direction’ that one may feel like following to reach ones’ destination.

This is just an example. There is yet another one available for you to have a glance on our ‘beloved Murree Road’! Recently the students of the NCA Rawalpindi campus, tried to bring some colour to the dull and dreary city environment when they painted floral patterns on a few grey ‘steel & mortar’ pillars of the ‘Metro Line’.

As one can hardly find real flowers blooming anywhere on the whole length of Murree Road, these colourful floral patterns were a relief to the eyes. But somebody could not stand this little piece of beauty and very conveniently defaced it by spraying black paint on those! Turning the beauty to ugly!

You just look around and you will realise as if all these sign and guide boards are being used as billboards for free publicity. We concede that a vast majority of our civic bodies, the tehsil or the district municipal corporations and development authorities, are not much keen to take measures, which may add to be beauty of the areas under their respective administrative controls.

Still, whatever little steps they take to ‘create’ beauty or install public service messages, those are damaged or defaced overnight! Interesting is the fact that most of these posters pasted on these official public service sign boards do carry the name of the patrons of these parties, organizations or individuals. In many cases with pictures too and almost always carry the contact numbers (mostly cell phone numbers)!

Now, we wonder whether there exist any laws under which such the persons or the parties committing these ‘acts’ could be roped in and convicted? We believe there are certain laws which apply to the people who cause any kind of damage to the public or private properties. And defacing these public sign boards and hoardings indeed amounts to damage ‘properties’ meant for public service.

It is so easy for the police or the city, town administrations to rope in these people, who turn a few nice things in our lives ugly, because almost every such poster carries the identity as well as contact numbers.

We are not sure whether these ‘culprits’ could be put behind the bars for committing this offence. But, at least, the law enforcers can fine them for the amount of money that would be required to clean these boards and hoardings and restore those to the purpose for which those are meant.

Or, probably we have become accustomed and started loving this ugliness!