Bicycle ride in a Tank village a boon or bane for dwellers:.

PESHAWAR -- The relationship of bicycle with man is old since the times when man had nothing to ride on, bicycle was his only source of travelling.Late Pashto poet Syed Rasul Rasa had once versified the benefits of bicycle in his poem titled 'Sykala Wafadara' (My loyal cycle) that garnered such a widespread popularity that it was included in the Pashto syllabus from grade one to Pashto master level and Pakhtun readers still remember the couplets of the said poem.

Moreover, a bicycle can help one to lose weight as paddling bicycle helps us to experience a good exercise , also riding a bicycle causes no pollution, one can pick it up where there is a broken path.

In prevailing pandemic of corona when ban has been imposed on intercity transport, riding bicycle could be really a boon for villagers but the residents of the Kot Khadak a backward area of Gomal, are deprived of this wonderful and cheaper way of transport which neither needs fuel nor any other service.

The story goes on like this, bicycle found a bad day when a Jirga members of Kot Khadak village of Gomal area, some 30 kilometers towards the South of Tank on Wana road consisting of around 700 families were forced to impose a strict ban on bicycle ride way back in 1990 and it was not without a reason.

The story goes on like this; Haji Kifayat Ullah, an eye witness of the jirga which announced the verdict regarding ban on riding bicycle, narrated that young students of the village Narsej and Sagai used to ride bicycles to reach to their High School located some six kilometers away in Gomal Bazar and Kot Hakim.While the female folk of the village both young and old had to fetch water from a distant place by carrying pitchers on their heads and walked for several miles. Haji Kifayat recalled that several groups of young boys riding bicycles used the same route and frequently had a collision with women carrying water filled pitchers.The accident also caused an altercation between students and women who became infuriated over wastage of their hard work of carrying water from such a long distance.

Haji Kifayat Ullah went on to say that bicycle riding soon became a great hurdle in the way of smooth foot travel for women and at times would result in serious scuffles which sometimes led to breach of family honour.Daily arguments between womenfolk and youngsters of the area forced...

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